Volume 24 Issue 7 - April 2019

IN WITH THE NEW
THE MUSIC OF
Raven Chacon
WENDALYN BARTLEY
Back in November 2018, I wrote
about a conversation I had with
David Schotzko, Arraymusic’s
new artistic director. One of the
things he told me about at the time
was his plan to continue Arraymusic’s
Raven Chacon
community-based focus through
co-productions as well as the presenting of minifestivals
that highlight the music of specific composers.
On the weekend of April 12 to 14, one such co-produced
mini-festival will come to fruition, bringing together
Arraymusic, the Music Gallery and Native Women in the
Arts to present the music of Raven Chacon.
I had a chance to speak with Chacon about the music we’ll be
hearing during the festival as well as acquaint myself with some of his
other artistic projects and his thinking about music and composition.
What I discovered was an intriguing body of work that was coming
from a unique perspective: one that not so much pushed against
established new music norms, but rather one that originated from a
different place, a different mind.
Before we began our conversation, Chacon handed me a large-sized
postcard with an image from Canyon de Chelly on the front, with
recording grooves, playable on a turntable, imprinted upon the cardboard
paper. It was a field recording he had made in 1999 from the
Canyon de Chelly, located in the state of Arizona, east of the Grand
Canyon – a visually stunning place close to the Navajo Nation home
where he grew up. Later in our conversation he spoke about this
recording: “It was made in a quiet place at a quiet time of day. In the
studio, I turned the volume up to the max. It’s not about the pristine
anthropological capturing or listening to this place. It’s about letting
this place scream. Speak and scream,” he said.
Even though we were sitting in a Toronto café for our conversation,
I felt the presence of this other space as we spoke about his chamber
music compositions, noise-based pieces, score notations, installations,
films and his various collaborations.
The mini-festival begins on April 12 with a concert of Chacon’s
chamber music performed by the Array Ensemble. One piece on the
program will be his solo cello work Quiver, commissioned by Michelle
Kesler in 2018 and one of a three-part series of pieces connected to
hunting. This hunting series began with his piece Taa’go Deza [Three
Points], three songs for singing cellist commissioned by Dawn Avery
in 2007. During that piece, the performer sounds like an animal
being chased while having to sing and play simultaneously. Invisible
Arc for solo cello, written in 2017, is inspired by a traditional Navajo
hunting song and reflects the process of waiting for the animal as a
prayer for the life of the animal about to be killed.) Quiver, Chacon
explains, is about conflicting actions, much like what happens when
one tries to rub one’s stomach in a circular motion while patting the
head. During the hunt, the conflict comes in the trading of one life for
another, the need to hunt and kill an animal so one can survive. One
instance of this occurs musically when the cellist is asked to perform
circular bowing in one direction while drumming with their fingers
on the bow.
Other works on Friday night’s concert include Lats’ aadah, for
solo violin (2004), a word which means the number 11 in Navajo;
Naakishchiin Ana’i, for flute and marimba (2004) which includes a
lot of silence during the piece; and a newly commissioned work titled
(Bury Me) Where The Lightning [Will] Never Find Me for violin, cello,
clarinet and percussion. In this piece, he is experimenting with zigzag
forms within melodies, rhythmic patterns, timbral shapes and tempo
accelerations; it is a continuation of a previous work, Atsiniltlishiye,
from 2003.
8 | April 2019 thewholenote.com