Raven Chacon, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Diné composer, performer and installation artist originally from Fort Defiance, Navajo Nation is in Kansas City to work with local arts institutions, including the UMKC Conservatory. Winner of the 2022 Pulitzer Prize in Music, Chacon is in residence as part of Soundings: An Exhibition in Five Parts at the Kansas City Art Institute, will deliver the Jerome Nerman Lecture at Johnson County Community College, and is UMKC Conservatory’s Howard and Patricia Barr Institute for American Composition Studies Laureate at the UMKC Conservatory.
Dr. Paul Rudy, Curators' Distinguished Professor of Music notes, "We have been working hard to diversify our program and interactions in composition at UMKC. Raven is the first Native American to win the Pulitzer Prize in music. As I’ve spoken with him in preparation for conducting his American Ledger No. 1 at Agnes Arts, it’s become clear to me that he presents a whole new way of thinking about music and art, and how they fluidly move between each other. His music represents a completely different way of thinking and sounding, and will offer us and our students exciting new perspectives previously unheard in our Conservatory programs."
Raven Chacon's activities include:
Oct. 26, 7 p.m. A performance of his composition American Ledger No. 1, conducted by Curators’ Distinguished Professor of Music, Dr. Paul Rudy, at Agnes Arts, 1328 Agnes Ave. Kansas City, MO, FREE
Oct. 27, 4 p.m., Chacon will speak with the Conservatory’s The Artist in Society class, Grant Recital Hall, FREE
Oct. 27, 6:30 p.m., Chacon gives The Jerome Nerman Lecture at JCCC Midwest Trust Center, Yardley Hall, Johnson County Community College, 12345 College Avenue, Overland Park, KS, FREE
Oct. 28 9 a.m., Chacon speaks to Critical Approaches to Music Analysis class in Grant Hall, room 314, FREE
Oct. 28, 1–3 p.m., Chacon speaks to Composer’s Forum, James C. Olson Performing Arts Center, room 521, FREE
As a solo artist, Chacon has exhibited, performed, or had works performed at LACMA, The Renaissance Society, San Francisco Electronic Music Festival, REDCAT, Vancouver Art Gallery, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Borealis Festival, SITE Santa Fe, Chaco Canyon, Ende Tymes Festival, and The Kennedy Center. As a member of Postcommodity from 2009–2018, he co-created artworks presented at the Whitney Biennial, documenta 14, Carnegie International 57, as well as the 2-mile long land art installation Repellent Fence.
A recording artist over the span of 22 years, Chacon has appeared on more than eighty releases on various national and international labels. His 2020 Manifest Destiny opera Sweet Land, co-composed with Du Yun, received critical acclaim from The LA Times, The New York Times, and The New Yorker, and was named 2021 Opera of the Year by the Music Critics Association of North America.
Since 2004, he has mentored over 300 high school Native composers in the writing of new string quartets for the Native American Composer Apprenticeship Project (NACAP). Chacon is the recipient of the United States Artists fellowship in Music, The Creative Capital award in Visual Arts, The Native Arts and Cultures Foundation artist fellowship, the American Academy’s Berlin Prize for Music Composition, the Bemis Center’s Ree Kaneko Award, and in 2022 serves as the Pew Fellow-in-Residence.
His solo artworks are in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Smithsonian’s American Art Museum and National Museum of the American Indian, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Getty Research Institute, the University of New Mexico Art Museum, and various private collections.
More information:
http://spiderwebsinthesky.com/
https://kcai.edu/event/soundings-an-exhibition-in-five-parts/
https://www.nermanmuseum.org/calendar/events/2022-10-27-jerome-nerman-raven-chacon.html