Live Music
Wheelock Variations in Concert
Friday, November 14, 2025 from 1—2 pm
Know before you go
In-person event
Location: Morse Auditorium
Included with admission
Wheelock Church, Choctaw Nation.
Guitarist Alexander Lassa and composer Charles Shadle present Wheelock Variations: The Choctaw Hymn Tradition in a Contemporary Context, a concert that celebrates both musicians’ tribal identity as enrolled members of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma.
The central work on the program is Shadle’s Wheelock Variations, a 25-minute work for solo guitar, commissioned by Lassa, that is based on “Vba Isht Taloa 139” (Choctaw Hymn 139). The title of Wheelock Variations references the historic Wheelock Academy near Millerton Oklahoma/Choctaw Nation, and the nearby Wheelock Church. Both bear the name of Eleazar Wheelock (1711–1779), Congregational minister and founder of Dartmouth college, and an important advocate for the education of Native American people. Wheelock Academy was established by the respected early missionary to the Choctaws, Alfred Wright (1788-1853), who founded the school in 1832. He and his congregation built the stone Wheelock Church in 1845–46. Very much in the severe style of the New England country meeting house, it is the oldest church building in Oklahoma. It has recently been returned to the ownership of the Choctaw Nation.
In part, Wheelock Variations memorializes this event, while also engaging, through musical means, with the complex history of the place and its people. Wheelock Variations can be heard as an act of cultural preservation that understands that the past, in order to stay viable, must be continually reimagined, so that it remains accessible to both Choctaw and non-Choctaw listeners.
About the collaborators
Charles Shadle
Alex Lassa
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