The Sanford Lab doesn’t just inspire scientists and historians. It also inspires artists. Black Hills State University student Jesse Dunaway wrote a choral composition about the Lab.
Dunaway sits at a piano as he discusses the project. He says the local area inspired him.
“My purpose kind of behind it, aside from just writing a piece of music, it was to try and tell somebody a story and the story is the people in the Black Hills, you know. There’s a really interesting culture that’s almost closed off from the rest of the world. Like the people around here, they can feel it and they know it’s there. But to try to describe it to somebody else, they just have to come here and just kind of experience that,” explained Dunaway.
Dunaway used a poem about the Yukon to help write one of his favorite movements. He says he saw much of South Dakota reflected in the poem.
“It talks about how it’s not just the gold that’s there. It’s the land that most people would find just treacherous and nobody would want to live here. But for local South Dakotans, that’s how everybody views it. But they still stick around here and they love this place more than life itself,” says Dunaway.
Dunaway is working to line up another concert in the Northern Hills in the upcoming months.
You hear a longer interview between Jesse Dunaway and Morning Classics Host Owen DeJong by clicking play below.