Native Women in the Arts, The Music Gallery, and Arraymusic present Raven Chacon Mini-Festival.
We are pleased to team up once again with The Music Gallery along with Arraymusic to present the Raven Chacon mini-festival featuring the world premiere of For Zitkála-Šá, dedicated to the first American Indian librettist.
Friday, April 12 – Sunday, April 14, 2019
Doors: 7:30PM | Concert: 8PM
The Music Gallery, 918 Bathurst St.
$20 Regular / $10 Members, Students / $15 Advance at musicgallery.org
Festival pass $30
Originally from the Navajo Nation, Raven Chacon, born in 1977, is a composer of chamber music, a performer of experimental noise music, and an installation artist. He performs regularly as a solo artist as well as with numerous ensembles in the Southwest and beyond, and was a long-time member of the Indigenous art collective Postcommodity. Chacon’s work explores sounds of acoustic handmade instruments overdriven through electric systems and the direct and indirect audio feedback responses from their interactions.
On Friday night, the Array ensemble takes on a selection of Chacon’s chamber works including a newly commissioned work.
Native Women in the Arts co-presents Saturday night’s For Zitkála-Šá, dedicated to the Dakota violin teacher, activist, and librettist for The Sun Dance Opera, (1913), the first American Indian opera. Each composition is custom written for an Indigenous woman currently working in contemporary music performance or composition: Suzanne Kite, Laura Ortman, Carmina Escobar, and Cheryl L’Hirondelle. The evening also features Raven collaborating with the caustic improvisation of c_RL (Allison Cameron, Nicole Rampersaud, and Germaine Liu).
On Sunday, Anishinaabe-Irish (Nipissing First Nation) saxophonist Olivia Shortt (Stereoscope Duo, Dialectica) opens the show with an intensely wide-ranging approach to her instrument.
