White Snake Projects Presents
REQUIEM FOR
AMERICA
Singing For the Invisible People
May 17, 2026 | 7:30PM | Barbican Hall, London
ABOUT
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 BBC 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.
Commissioned by White Snake Projects & The Lenape Center
My vision is to tour Requiem to all 50 states, plus D.C. Each performance will feature Indigenous singers recruited from local tribal communities, an essential element to the mission: To create cultural catharsis as we speak the truth of the country’s genesis. Through truth-singing, we can collectively recount and face the nation’s blood-soaked nativity. This is a pivotal moment for a project I have nurtured on my own until now. After 20 years, I have found a collaborator, White Snake Projects, an activist performance company, to develop, support and premiere the work. WSP believes in the power of this work, not just artistically but in terms of what it can do for truth-telling. Together, we will be premiering the first Requiem in 2026, initially with the BBC on May 17th and then in Boston on November 14th.
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SUPPORT
Thank you to the Barbican Centre and the BBC Symphony Orchestra for supporting the Requiem for America project, with foundational support from co-commissioner White Snake Projects, co-commissioner The Lenape Center, and many steadfast individuals without whom the project would not have been possible. Requiem received key support from many organizations including Mellon Foundation, the Native Arts & Culture Foundation’s Transformative Change + Indigenous Arts (SHIFT) program, Creative Capital, MAP Fund, Aaron Copland House, the School for Advanced Research Indian Arts Research Center, Institute of American Indian Arts, the Society for New Music, the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater College of Arts and Communication, Forge Project, the University of Wisconsin-River Falls Music Program, Indiana University Department of Interdisciplinary Studies, the Northern Illinois University School of Music, Red Road Reclamation, the American Composers Forum, and the City of Boston’s Mayor’s Office of Arts & Culture.
White Snake Projects’ 2025-2026 programming is supported by a generous grant from the Mellon Foundation. Our programming is also supported the National Endowment for the Arts, the Mass Cultural Council, the Boston Cultural Council, Reopen Creative Boston Fund, administered by the Mayor’s Office of Arts and Culture, The Asian Community Fund at the Boston Foundation, Live Arts Boston, and New Music USA.
