Making America: Requiem for America
19:30
Sun 17 May 2026
Barbican, London

Mohican/Munsee-Lenape composer Brent Michael Davids’s Requiem pairs Indigenous letters with founding-era genocidal texts to lay bare, state by state, the dark foundations of the United States of America. A contralto narrator embodying the Earth guides us along a deeply moving musical arc, from the colonial “Doctrine of Discovery” to a final Threnoedia.
Conducted by Teddy Abrams, Davids’s monumental work features the 鶹 Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, an ensemble of Native American singers and Davids himself, on Native American flute. This landmark world premiere is more than a concert - it’s a reckoning, a remembrance, and a call to truth through music.