The New York Kammermusiker 19th Annual North Dakota Winds of Change Concerts August 3-9, 2026
The New York Kammermusiker is proud to announce that its 19th Annual ND/MN Winds of Change concerts
will celebrate the area’s musical and historical connections to our country’s 26th President, Theodore Roosevelt.
The Roosevelts have ancestral roots that can be traced back to 16th century Holland.
The NY Kammermusiker will acknowledge his heritage with Renaissance music from
the Low Counties, by Tielman Susato.
Roosevelt was a passionate reader of Shakespeare, with beautifully bound editions of
the complete works in his personal library. The NYK will present some incidental music
by the English Baroque composer, Henry Purcell, for a contemporary adaptation of, “A
Midsummer Night’s Dream.”
Icelandic history and culture deeply affected the young Roosevelt. He avidly read the
epic Norse sagas, their rugged, adventurous mythology deeply influencing his
character. He also had a deep admiration for Iceland’s governing assembly, the Althing,
the oldest legislature in the world, which dates back to 930 AD. The NYK will play two
special concerts on August 7, which will include several traditional Icelandic folk songs,
first at the Walla Theatre in Walhalla, ND, at 12:30pm, and the second concert at the
Icelandic State Park Pavilion near Cavalier, ND, at 3:30 PM.
Concerts at the Theodore Roosevelt White House were distinguished by their rich and
diverse programming featuring the foremost performers and composers of the time,
such as Edward MacDowell, Amy Beach, and Claude Debussy, all of whose music will
be performed by The New York Kammermusiker. The celebrated Black British
composer, Samuel Coleridge Taylor, had a personal meeting with Roosevelt at the
White House in 1904 which will be commemorated with a performance of his setting of
the American spiritual, “Deep River.”
The president’s daughter, Alice Roosevelt, was especially drawn to the most daring
music of the age - Ragtime! She insisted that Scott Joplin’s, “Maple Leaf Rag,” be
played at the White House. Joplin dedicated a work to Theodore Roosevelt, which the
NYK will perform, that was named after the book that Roosevelt wrote, both titled, “The
Strenuous Life.” The book reflected on Roosevelt’s philosophy of hard work and
personal challenge, which was put to the test when he suddenly became the president
in 1901.
The New York Kammermusiker’s 19th Annual ND/MN concerts will conclude with
another of the hundreds of works inspired by Roosevelt, a piece by Harry J. Lincoln, the
rousing 1919 march titled, “The Great American.”
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Media Contact:
Ilonna Pederson
Phone 212-749-2207
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