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After three nights of exceptional performances on the city’s largest pipe organ for the Vox Organi Festival last month, Vancouver New Music returns to the Pacific Spirit United Church on Nov. 18 to present the Vancouver premiere of Diné composer Raven Chacon’s 2022 Pulitzer Prize-winning piece Voiceless Mass, for 12 musicians.
Chacon is the first Indigenous composer to win a Pulitzer Prize for music and in early October was awarded the MacArthur Fellowship, also known as the “genius grant.” With Voiceless Mass Chacon has created a story without words and a “mass without sung voices in the guise of an organ concerto,” says classical music critic Mark Swed.
Voiceless Mass creates space for historically “unsung” voices to remake the weighted space of the church. The piece “considers the spaces in which we gather, the history of access of these spaces, and the land upon which these buildings sit,” says Chacon. The mass contains no audible singing voices.
“Voiceless Mass considers the futility of giving voice to the voiceless, when ceding space is never an option for those in power,” Chacon adds.
The ensemble will be spread throughout Pacific Spirit United Church, creating a spatialized, immersive sound experience for the audience, and the piece will make use of the church’s impressive pipe organ.
Voiceless Mass will be presented along with …lahgo adil’i dine doo yeehosinilgii yidaaghi (for large ensemble), which translated from Navajo means “acting strangely/differently in the company of strangers.” The piece takes inspiration from Cornelius Cardew’s graphic score Treatise, Navajo and Pueblo iconographies, and ancient petroglyphs in Albuquerque.
Chacon notes the piece is a reaction to some listeners seeking "Native American influence" in his music. "Whatever that meant [to them]," he says.
“So this piece puts that burden into the hands of white performers, as that is who is the majority in music institutions in this country.... I wanted to see if they would impose assumptions onto themselves, by being confronted with Indigenous symbols, a Navajo title and knowing it was made by an Indigenous composer.”
Raven Chacon’s ‘Voiceless Mass’ will be performed on Nov. 18 at the Pacific Spirit United Church. Get tickets at the Vancouver New Music website. ![[Tyee]](/design-article.thetyee.ca/ui/img/yellowblob.png){kind=small}
Read more: Indigenous, Music
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