Anjelica Lindsey Enters NPR Tiny Desk Contest 2026 with “Lullaby”

February 17, 2026 - Tulsa composer and Cherokee Nation citizen Anjelica Lindsey has officially entered the 2026 NPR Tiny Desk Contest with her original work “Lullaby,” performed by the Oklahoma Woman Ensemble featuring the Rose Rock Quartet.

Recorded live on February 8, 2026 at Wild Mountain Studios in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the submission presents “Lullaby” as an intimate yet cinematic work for voice, string quartet, and electronics. Lindsey composed and orchestrated the piece as part of her larger Oklahoma Woman song cycle for quartet, a project that centers women’s voices through chamber music and contemporary storytelling.

The Tiny Desk Contest, hosted annually by NPR, invites independent artists across the country to submit live performances recorded behind a desk. Lindsey’s entry features the Oklahoma Woman Ensemble in collaboration with the Rose Rock Quartet: violinists Kiersten Moser and Paulo Eskitch, violist Ethan Landis, and cellist Shelby Landis. Lindsey performs the vocal part, with Mark Kuykendall on synthesizer. Kuykendall also engineered, mixed, and mastered the live session. Additional video footage was captured by Lela Eskitch.

“Lullaby” unfolds with stark, poetic imagery. In the opening verse, a house collapses in a gust of wind while the singer remains suspended in a bed that stays made despite the fall. A refrain follows like a spell: “Fall back asleep, fall back asleep. Let nothing disturb you, I do proclaim.” The second verse shifts to displacement, as police force the lovers from their home, and they burrow into the earth in search of safety. The text moves between surrealism and political undertone, reflecting Lindsey’s broader commitment to cultural memory and lived experience.

Lindsey is a neo classical composer, violinist, and recording artist based in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and an enrolled citizen of the Cherokee Nation. Her work explores language revitalization, cultural reclamation, and identity through immersive composition. In 2025, she became the first Cherokee woman composer to premiere a string quartet and was later named a Public Fellow of the Oklahoma Center for the Humanities. Her music has been developed through private readings at Juilliard School and guest engagements including the University of Tulsa.

A 2024 recipient of the Artists Creative Fund grant, Lindsey continues developing major works including REQUIEM, the first composed in the Cherokee language, and Symphony No. 1, the first by a Native American woman in United States history.

Her Tiny Desk submission places Oklahoma chamber music and Indigenous authorship on a national platform, offering a quiet but resonant statement from Tulsa to a nationwide audience.

About the Entry

Oklahoma Woman Ensemble

Featuring The Rose Rock Quartet:
Violin I — Kiersten Moser
Violin II — Paulo Eskitch
Viola — Ethan Landis
Cello — Shelby Landis

With:
Anjelica Lindsey — voice
Mark Kuykendall — synthesizer

Recording Credits:
Recorded live at Wild Mountain Studios — Tulsa, Oklahoma, USA
Engineer, mix, master — Mark Kuykendall
Additional video footage — Lela Eskitch

Lyrics
One day as I lay in my bed, a strong gust of wind blew and my house fell down
So my bed and I, we tumbled down but the bed stayed made and in it I still laid

Fall back asleep, fall back asleep Let nothing disturb you, I do proclaim

One day as I lay with my love, police came to inform us we could not stay
So my love and I, we burrowed down into the ground where maybe we could live there happily