Seeding New Works

Joe Baker discusses how Nora’s example continues to inspire new works.

Joe Baker: Nora’s work has been the seed for many ideas and projects over the years. One of them is the Lenape Talking Dictionary, a website on which you can hear her voice and the voices of other Lenape speakers, and an important resource for the study of the language today. A recent tribute is the composer Brent Michael Davids’s composition, “Touching Leaves Woman”. As co-director of Lenape Center, Davids created the concert opera, “Purchase of Manhattan,” debunking the myth of the Manhattan purchase so engrained in the American psyche. In this case is the hand inked score by the composer, musically celebrating Nora Thompson Dean.