PEDx: Stands with Eagles

Roberta Rust, piano professor in the Conservatory of Music, was featured in a PEDx session entitled "Stands with Eagles," at The Piano Conference: NCKP 2025, held in Lombard, IL. She performed and discussed the music of Louis W. Ballard, North America's first and foremost indigenous composer of art music.

Celebrating Louis W. Ballard (Quapaw/Cherokee), the first and foremost indigenous North American composer of art music, Rust plays his Four American Indian Preludes (1963) and discusses the use of honor beats (considered gifts from the Great Spirit), powwow song shape, and imitation of tribal instruments. Rust and Ballard met in the 1980s when she premiered two of his Concert Fantasies at Carnegie Recital Hall. His Quapaw name, “Honganozhe,” means “Stands with Eagles” and as an educator, Dr. Ballard was music program director for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, earning a citation in the Congressional Record.