The Nerman Museum, KCAI and UMKC are coming together to host Pulitzer Prize winning artist Raven Chacon for a duo of events in KC – American Ledger (no. 1), a score by Chacon performed by a local ensemble with Paul Rudy, Curators’ Distinguished Professor of Music at UMKC Conservatory, conducting Wednesday, October 26, 7pm at Agnes Arts, and a lecture by Chacon at JCCC’s Midwest Trust Center on Thursday, Oct 276:30pm, with a reception prior at 5:30pm. Both are free and open to the public!
Hear the artist making some of the most engaging experimental music today.
Chacon is a composer, performer and installation artist from Fort Defiance, Navajo Nation. Chacon’s exhibits and performances — as a solo artist, collaborator or with musical ensemble Postcommodity — have taken him to Whitney Biennial, documenta 14, REDCAT, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Borealis Festival, San Francisco Electronic Music Festival, Chaco Canyon, Ende Tymes Festival, 18th Biennale of Sydney and the Kennedy Center.
Every year, he teaches 20 students to write string quartets for the Native American Composer Apprenticeship Project (NACAP). He is the recipient of the United States Artists Fellowship in Music, the Creative Capital Award in Visual Arts, the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation National Artist Fellowship, the American Academy’s Berlin Prize for Music Composition, and the Pew Fellowship. His composition “Voiceless Mass” was awarded the 2022 Pulitzer Prize in Music. He lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Chacon’s work is included in the exhibition “Soundings: An Exhibition in Five Parts,” on view at the Kansas City Art Institute Gallery: Center for Contemporary Practice now through Oct. 30, 2022. That exhibition, curated by Candice Hopkins and Dylan Robinson and organized by Independent Curators International (ICI), poses a central question—how can a score be a call and tool for decolonization?
In addition to the performance and lecture, Chacon will also meet with students of music and composition while in KC, with several times open to the public (see the UMKC Conservatory site for more details).
https://www.nermanmuseum.org/calendar/
https://kcai.edu/event/soundings-an-exhibition-in-five-parts/
