Menu
Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery

← All events

8 Oct 2020 at 4 pm

School of Music Building, UBC

Soundings: Raven Chacon and Symphonic Wind Ensemble

  • Raven Chacon

    Artist

    Raven Chacon is a composer, performer and installation artist from Fort Defiance, Navajo Nation whose practice centers in sound. Chacon is one of the three members of the interdisciplinary arts collective Post-commodity, along with Cristobal Martínez and Kade L. Twist. As a solo artist and in collaborations, Chacon has exhibited or performed at Whitney Biennial, documenta 14, REDCAT, Musée d’art Contemporain de Montréal, 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 artist fellowship, and the American Academy’s Berlin Prize for Music Composition. He lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and Toronto, ON.

    Read More

  • Robert Taylor

    Musician and Director

    Robert Taylor is Professor of Music and Director of Bands at the University of British Columbia, where he conducts the Symphonic Wind Ensemble, teaches graduate and undergraduate conducting and serves as Chair of the Woodwind Brass and Percussion Division. With a career in music education spanning over twenty-five years, previous appointments include the University of Puget Sound in the state of Washington and Eureka High School in northern California, where ensembles under his direction earned recognition by Downbeat Magazine, the Selmer Corporation and Grammy Signature Schools.

    Read More

Raven Chacon
American Ledger (No. 1), 2018
polyester banner
Collection of the artist

 

Around the corner from the Belkin Gallery, Raven Chacon’s score American Ledger (No. 1) hangs on the exterior of the Music Building at 6361 Memorial Road, UBC. The conceptual graphic score is to be performed by “many players with sustaining and percussive instruments, voices, coins, axe and wood, a police whistle and the striking of a match.” Chacon invites any number of musicians with any number of non-musicians to perform the piece; instructions for performers can be found on the exterior of the Music Building as well as below and all are encouraged to perform the score.

For many players with sustaining and percussive instruments, voices, coins, axe and wood, a police whistle, and a match.
For at least 13 minutes.
For any number of musicians with any number of non-musicians.
Each line is a minute or longer.
Line 1 is for both percussive and bendable tones.
Line 2 begins with a warbly long tone crossfading into waves of harmonic or dynamic increases. X = chop wood.
Line 3 is for police whistle(s). Other instruments may join.
Line 4 is for coins to be thrown. Two instruments may accompany.
Line 5 is a line.
Line 6 is a grand decelerando ending with the striking of a match.
Line 7 is for acknowledging groupings of 5’s and 4’s. Chop wood. End with everyone and everything.

On Thursday, 8 October 2020 at 4 pm, UBC School of Music’s Symphonic Wind Ensemble performs Chacon’s score outside the Music Building, in front of Gerhard Class’s 1968 Tuning Fork sculpture. Led by Robert Taylor, the Symphonic Wind Ensemble is comprised of the wind and percussion students in the School of Music and is dedicated to the performance of the finest wind repertoire, regardless of the period or size of ensemble and is distinguished by its high-level of performance, creative thematic programming and commitment to contemporary music through commissions, premieres and composer residencies.

Online from Friday 20 November 2020, the Chan Centre in collaboration with the UBC School of Music and the Belkin presents The Music of Raven Chacon as part of their Dot Com Series. This virtual concert includes digital recordings of three of Chacon’s compositions: American Ledger performed by the UBC Symphonic Wind Ensemble led by Robert Taylor; La’ts’aadah performed by violist Marina Thibeault; and Horse Notations performed by Paolo Bortolussi (flute), Jasper Wood and David Gillham (violins), Marina Thibeault (viola), Eric Wilson (cello) and Russell Wallace (drum).

Raven Chacon’s work is part of Soundings: An Exhibition in Five Parts at the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery (September 8-December 6, 2020).

Photos: Rachel Topham Photography
Video: Aya Garcia


  • Raven Chacon

    Artist

    Raven Chacon is a composer, performer and installation artist from Fort Defiance, Navajo Nation whose practice centers in sound. Chacon is one of the three members of the interdisciplinary arts collective Post-commodity, along with Cristobal Martínez and Kade L. Twist. As a solo artist and in collaborations, Chacon has exhibited or performed at Whitney Biennial, documenta 14, REDCAT, Musée d’art Contemporain de Montréal, 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 artist fellowship, and the American Academy’s Berlin Prize for Music Composition. He lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and Toronto, ON.

    Read More

  • Robert Taylor

    Musician and Director

    Robert Taylor is Professor of Music and Director of Bands at the University of British Columbia, where he conducts the Symphonic Wind Ensemble, teaches graduate and undergraduate conducting and serves as Chair of the Woodwind Brass and Percussion Division. With a career in music education spanning over twenty-five years, previous appointments include the University of Puget Sound in the state of Washington and Eureka High School in northern California, where ensembles under his direction earned recognition by Downbeat Magazine, the Selmer Corporation and Grammy Signature Schools.

    Read More

Related