Raven Chacon at the ICA

Raven Chacon is a composer, performer, and installation artist from Fort Defiance, Navajo Nation. As a solo artist, Chacon has exhibited, performed, or had works performed at LACMA, The Renaissance Society, San Francisco Electronic Music Festival, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Borealis Festival, SITE Santa Fe, Chaco Canyon, Ende Tymes Festival, and Swiss Institute Contemporary Art New York. As a member of Postcommodity from 2009 through 2018, he co-created artworks presented at the Whitney Biennial, documenta 14, Carnegie International 57, and the two-mile-long land art installation Repellent Fence.

As a recording artist for over 24 years, Chacon has appeared on more than 80 releases on various national and international labels. In 2022, he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in Music for his composition Voiceless Mass. 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, Chacon has mentored over 300 high school Native composers in writing 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, the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists Award (2022), the Pew Fellow-in-Residence (2022), and is a 2023 MacArthur Fellow.

10:30 AM Invisible Arc, 2016–17 Poss Family Mediatheque (4 FL)

Score for solo cello, written for and performed by Rhonda Rider.

10:30 AM Film screening Barbara Lee Family Foundation Theater (3 FL)

A Song Often Played on the Radio, 2019. 22 min. In a search for the mythological Cities of Cibola, a horseman finds himself in a race against another rogue seeking the valuable metals of the New Mexican desert. Spurred by the justification of moralistic dichos, or Spanish-language proverb, the rival explorers come to learn about what truly brought them to this land, understanding their true identities, and finding that they were only stealing from themselves.

Earth Mother / Father Sky, 2021. 30 min. This film captures a collaboration with Rob Thorne, a Ngāti Tumutumu/Tainui composer and anthropologist. Thorne performed on his wind instruments as the sun rose near his home in Oruaiti, Aotearoa (New Zealand), while Chacon did the same as the sun set in New Mexico.

11 AM Vertical Neighbors, 2024 Outside front entrance

Vertical Neighbors is a composition for two pairs of the same brass horn instrument, first presented on the occasion of Chacon’s solo exhibition, A Worm’s Eye View from a Bird’s Beak, at the Swiss Institute / Contemporary Art New York. The score exists as a set of murals, visible to one or more musicians on the ground and their counterparts in an elevated position. A performance of this composition becomes an acknowledgement of vertical orientations as temporal relationships, aligning past and future knowledge.

Performed by members of the Callithumpian Consort, Neil Godwin, Wesley Hopper, Robert Krahn, and Connor Wood, and directed by Stephen Drury.

11:30 AM Music for Voice, 2003 Barbara Lee Family Foundation Theater (3 FL)

Music composition for four performers with each positioned in front of a tam-tam of various size. Each performer rubs on the tam-tam with a superball, while mouthing the heard ‘words’ of the sounds produced by the gestures indicated. The audience or viewer gathers their own version of what is being said.

Performed by members of the Callithumpian Consort, directed by Stephen Drury: John Andress, Lilit Hartunian, Sam Kelder, and Stephen Marotto

11:45 AM Dį́į́’ts’ïadah, 2024 Barbara Lee Family Foundation Theater (3 FL)

Score for double bass, written for and performed by Ross Wightman.

12:30 PM Ella Llora, 2002 Poss Family Mediatheque (4 FL)

The origins of this composition are a found cassette on the streets of Albuquerque of a woman giving recorded court testimony or deposition. A large portion of the audio recording contains the woman in a state of sorrowful crying. The crying was transcribed into standard Western music notation for a singer to perform. The original audio cassette has since been destroyed.

Performed by Aliana de la Guardia.

12:30 PM Film screening Barbara Lee Family Foundation Theater, (3 FL)

1 PM Round, 2007 State Street Corporation Lobby (1 FL)

Score for several players surrounding a turntable.

Performed by Dani Abugattas, Sam Beebe, Raven Chacon, Jenelle Porter, and Shane Silverstein

1:30 PM Double Weaving, 2014 Barbara Lee Family Foundation Theater (3 FL)

Score for string quartet.

Performed by members of the Callithumpian Consort, directed by Stephen Drury:
Lilit Hartunian, Sam Kelder, Stephen Marotto, and Sophia Szokolay

2 PM Vertical Neighbors, 2024 Outside front entrance

2 PM Film screening Barbara Lee Family Foundation Theater (3 FL)

2:30 PM Invisible Arc, 2016–17 Poss Family Mediatheque (4 FL)

3 PM Dį́į́’ts’ïadah, 2024 Barbara Lee Family Foundation Theater (3 FL)

3:15 PM Music for Voice, 2003 Barbara Lee Family Foundation Theater (3 FL)

3:30 PM Film screening Barbara Lee Family Foundation Theater (3 FL)

3:30 PM Compass, 2024 Putnam Investments Plaza, outside

For solo overly-amplified guitar. Performed outdoors, the guitarist takes cues from shadows, wind, insects, clouds, and more to determine the course of musical decisions. Compass encourages the reading of pulses and paces of the world around us. We can align with all entities with whom we share our universe, we can be a part of them and respond when they reveal themselves to us.

Performed by Jeff Platz

4 PM Ella Llora, 2002 Poss Family Mediatheque (4 FL)

4:15 PM Couplet, 2024 Poss Family Mediatheque (4 FL)

Score for two cellos, performed by Rhonda Rider and Adam Broce.

Radio Coyote, 2001 State Street Corporation Lobby (1 FL)

A programming takeover of Cambridge-based internet radio station Central on Air. Live video and audio broadcast.

Be’eldiildaahsinil (Abduction Song), 2001 Elevator Lobby (1 FL)

An oral account, relayed by Chacon’s grandfather, Frank Dineyazhe, telling a family story in the Diné language. As a teenaged girl, Chacon’s great-great-grandmother was kidnapped by a Mexican man and taken from her home at Dinetah (Navajo homelands) to what is now Albuquerque, New Mexico (Bee’eldiildaahsinil). While filming in restricted areas of Albuquerque International Airport, the camera moves as though it is surveilling the site, creating a disjuncture in time and relaying a generations-old story of abduction while capturing the transit of people in present-day Albuquerque.

While Contemplating Their Fate In The Stars, The Twins Surround The Enemy, 2003 Common Room (1 FL)

A pair of birds interact with a pitch theremin instrument while situated in a cage. The instrument, being the center of the birds’ home, becomes an encroaching presence that the birds realize can be manipulated over time. Over the course of the piece, the birds change the pitch with the placement of their bodies, while harmonizing with the instrument by matching their chirps with its pitch.

“The title is based on the Navajo creation story of the hero twins, who fought the monsters who were terrorizing the Diné people. In the days after 9/11, I was thinking often of how one (or a group of people) force themselves to harmonize with an encroaching presence while in the position of defense. When backed into a corner, what choreography of response is unconscious reaction, and what is self-determined. What can one do so that their defense is not perceived as aggression, and can the presence of the smaller bodies interrupt the invasive force?” –Raven Chacon

Meet the Beatless, 2003 Glass Elevator

An album of ten new songs composed using audio shards from 140 Beatles songs. Samples of the original records were chosen for their chord progression, tempo/time signature, lyrical content, harmonic (non-)compatibility, and retrograde inversion.

“As a person trying to understand the structures of tonal harmony, I immersed myself in the music of The Beatles. When I had exhausted my ears incessantly listening to their twelve albums and learned what I could from them, I recorded each onto a cassette tape, then proceeded to dismantle the cassette shell until I could remove the tape spool and re-assemble the cassette as a retrograde version of the album. This created 12 ‘new’ albums for me to listen to. Ten years later, I returned to these backward versions of these songs and was inspired to seek other ways to alter the content of the most known of rock bands.” –Raven Chacon

• Raven Chacon at the ICA will include performance and sound-based art in the State Street Corporation Lobby, Barbara Lee Family Foundation Theater, galleries, glass elevator, and outside on the Putman Investments Plaza.
• Some performances may be loud. Earplugs will be available from ICA staff upon request.
• Accessible seating is available in the theater first-come first-served and may be selected upon theater entry. Please contact our Visitor Services team at visitorservices@icaboston.org or 617-478-3100 for more information.
• Assistive listening devices are available for all theater programs at the theater entrance.
• A link to live captioning will be available in the theater.
• Are there other access accommodations that would be useful to help you fully participate in this program? Let us know at accessibility@icaboston.org or learn more about Accessibility at the ICA at icaboston.org/accessibility.