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raven chacon

New and Recent Work

Raven Chacon
Thursday, November 21, 2024 at 6PM
EMPAC Studio 2

Award-winning composer and visual artist Raven Chacon gives a talk on his recent work, which explores the sonic, visual, and thematic elements of his experimental practice.

Chacon’s work threads its way through sound, video, scores, sculpture, and performance to engage with the land and its inhabitants, and to address topics of Indigenous sovereignty and environmental justice. His compositions include orchestral instruments and instrumentalize found objects, as in his American Ledger No. 1 (2018), a large graphic score displayed as a flag which traces the history of settler colonialism in the United States. His piece Voiceless Mass (2021), for which Chacon won a Pulitzer Prize, is a work for organ and ensemble which reflects upon the relationship between the Christian church and Indigenous populations. A mass without voices, the composition gives musical form to the silencing of Indigenous expression and language, and the impossibility of their recovery.

Chacon also introduces a new EMPAC-commissioned project with San Francisco-based experimental music duo The Living Earth Show, which is being developed over the next year and includes artists and musicians based in New York’s Hudson Valley and Capital Region.

This residency continues and expands Chacon’s musical collaboration with The Living Earth Show as a follow-up to Tremble Staves, an outdoor collaborative performance with professional and student performers, which premiered at the Sutro Baths in San Francisco in 2019. Exploring issues around water usage, access, and rights, Tremble Staves was developed in collaboration with the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy and the Art in the Parks Program in San Francisco.

All are invited to stay for a reception, following the talk.

Main Image: Raven Chacon. Courtesy the artist.

Dates + Tickets

Talk
New and Recent Work
Raven Chacon
Thursday 21
6:00 PM
November 2024
FREE

Reception follows.

Presented By

EMPAC Fall 2024

Artist

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