Volume 24 Issue 7 - April 2019

works we will hear in the first concert on Friday night are pieces
coming from this point of view, works “that are primarily written for
the people who are playing them and nobody else. The audience just
happens to be there,” he said. With the solo works, there is a feedback
loop built into the piece. “In Quiver, for example, this happens a lot,
with the performer interacting silently with the audience. Dynamics
are written on the rests to show how the performer might interact, to
indicate the intensity of the way they manage that feedback loop.”
In the course of our conversation, we also spoke about a work
composed for the Kronos Quartet as part of their Fifty for the Future
project (something Toronto audiences were introduced to in 2016
when Kronos performed during the 21C Festival). In Chacon’s Kronos
piece, The Journey of the Horizontal People (2016), he worked with
the idea of a future creation story, “an alternate universe creation
story” with people dispersing from a place to find other people like
them in order to survive. “This could be related to the need to create
diversity in philosophy, world view, or genetics,” he explained. “The
music is written in such a way that the players will get lost, even
the virtuosic players of Kronos. For example, at one point, the first
violinist is asked to speed up, the cellist to slow down, the second
violinist to stay at the original tempo, and the viola to speed up
immensely.” Another aspect of the piece, he says, is that it stipulates
that a woman must be in the quartet, as she is the one called upon to
realign the other performers when they get lost. “And if no woman is
in the quartet?” I asked. “Two options are possible: the eldest person
in the quartet takes on that role, but more preferable would be for
the man who most identifies as a woman. If more than one woman
is in the quartet, the oldest one is chosen.” In this way, the matriarchal
worldview found in many native traditions becomes an integral
aspect of the piece, but as Chacon adds, “This should reflect everyone’s
worldview.”
Another significant aspect of Chacon’s creative work has been his
involvement in Postcommodity, a collective of Native American artists
that began in 2007 and with whom he worked from 2009 to 2018.
Much of Postcommodity’s work is installation-based with sound
being one of the main mediums used. One of Chacon’s favourite
pieces with the collective, he says, is the four-act opera The Ears
Between Worlds Are Always Speaking, from 2017, a site-specific work
using LRADs (Long Range Acoustic Devices) to project hyper-directional
sound upon the ruins of Aristotle’s Lyceum in Greece. Each day,
the installation performed music from Greece and the Southwestern
United States, with a libretto both spoken and sung that told stories of
long-walk migrations. Another collaboration is a performance art film
created with Postcommodity member Cristóbal Martínez that tells the
story of two characters searching for the mythological cities of gold
which the conquistadors believed were in New Mexico. The piece has
been showing this past winter at the Agnes Etherington Art Centre in
Kingston as part of an exhibition titled Soundings that explores the
question of how a score can be a call, and tool, for decolonization.
Currently, Chacon is feeling the pull back to composing chamber
music, finishing pieces already started or developing ideas he has been
working on for a while. One major project due to be performed this
November is Sweet Land, an opera with American composer Du Yun.
They will be working with Yuval Sharon, the artistic director of The
Industry, a company dedicated to new and experimental opera located
in Los Angeles. The opera is an alternate history of the United States
focusing on encounters such as ships arriving on a shore, railroads
cutting through the country, and feasts or welcomings that turned out
one way or the other. The opera will be telling of these encounters and
contacts between Indigenous people and others coming to visit.
Overall, the weekend of April 12 to 14 provides an excellent opportunity
to hear a body of work that combines many refreshing ideas
and creative strategies from someone relatively new to local audiences.
I for one look forward to having a unique experience of engagement
with the musical imaginings of Raven Chacon.
Raven Chacon: Mini-Festival takes place at 918 Bathurst Street,
Friday to Sunday April 12 to 14.
Wendalyn Bartley is a Toronto-based composer and electro-vocal
sound artist. sounddreaming@gmail.com.
Postcommodity’s From Smoke
IN WITH THE NEW
QUICK PICKS
(consult our listings for details)
APR 5, 7PM: Esprit Orchestra presents “New Wave Reprise” with
world premieres by five emerging composers. The evening includes
a keynote address by Montreal composer John Rea.
APR 6, 8PM: Spectrum Music presents “Jests in Time!” with
compositions inspired by the Jester archetype and a pre-concert
monologue by an emerging Toronto comedian. New pieces by
Spectrum composers Chelsea McBride, Mason Victoria, Jackson
Welchner, Graham Campbell, Tiffany Hanus and Noah Franche-
Nolan will be presented by performers Simone Baron, accordion,
the Odin String Quartet and Alex Pollard, dancer.
APR 28, 3PM: The Music Gallery presents “Sounding Difference,”
another in their Deep Listening experiences with Anne Bourne
performing the text scores of Pauline Oliveros. Free.
APR 28, 8PM: New Music Concerts. Their “Luminaries” concert
remembers the music of two friends of NMC over the years: Gilles
Tremblay and Pierre Boulez. The evening includes the performance
of Tremblay’s work Envoi for solo piano and ensemble, and Boulez’s
iconic masterpiece Le Marteau sans maître poems by René Char for
voice and six instruments.
MAY 3, 8PM: The Music Gallery. In this final Emergents concert of
the season, the experimental music theatre group Din of Shadows
will present their newest project Material Mythology with a team
of performers, composers, dancers and visual artists. The piece
speculates about the hidden meanings and mythologies behind
everyday actions, objects and spaces.
10 | April 2019 thewholenote.com