Raven Chacon

Raven Chacon (born 1977) is a Diné composer, musician and artist. Born in Fort Defiance, Arizona within the Navajo Nation, Chacon became the first Native American to win a Pulitzer Prize for Music, for his Voiceless Mass in 2022.

He has also been a solo performer of noise music and worked with groups such as Postcommodity.^[1]

Life and career

Raven Chacon was born in 1977 in Fort Defiance, Arizona, US within the Navajo Nation.^[2] He attended the University of New Mexico, where he obtained his BA in Fine Arts in 2001, then received an MFA in music composition from the California Institute of the Arts.^[3] He was a student of James Tenney, Morton Subotnick, Michael Pisaro, Wadada Leo Smith and Christopher Shultis.

Chacon's visual and sonic artwork has been exhibited widely in the U.S. and abroad.^[4] His room-sized sound and text installation, Still Life, #3 (2015), was exhibited in the Transformer: Native Art in Light and Sound exhibition at the National Museum of the American Indian, New York.^[5][6] His collective and solo work has been presented at Sydney Biennale,^[7] Kennedy Center, the Whitney Biennial,^[8] documenta 14,^[9] Adelaide International, Vancouver Art Gallery, ASU Art Museum, Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal, the San Francisco Electronic Music Festival,^[10] the Heard Museum,^[11] Chaco Canyon, and Performance Today.^[12]

Chacon also performs in the groups KILT with Bob Bellerue, Mesa Ritual with William Fowler Collins, Endlings with John Dieterich, and collaborations with Laura Ortman. In 2016, he was commissioned by Kronos Quartet to compose a work for their Fifty For The Future project.^[13]

Chacon serves as Composer-in-Residence with the Native American Composers Apprenticeship Project.^[14] In 2012, he was awarded a Creative Capital^[15] Visual Arts grant. In 2014, he was honored with a Native Arts and Cultures Foundation National Artist Fellowship in Music.^[16] In 2018, Chacon was awarded the Berlin Prize by the American Academy in Berlin.^[17]

In 2022, Chacon became the first Native American to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music, which he received for his composition Voiceless Mass.^[18]

Postcommodity

Chacon was a member of the Native American art collective, Postcommodity, with whom he has developed multimedia installations which have been exhibited internationally.^[8] Other members include Cristóbal Martínez, Kade L. Twist, Steven Yazzie and Nathan Young.^[8] In 2017, as part of Postcommodity, Chacon created the multimedia project, ...in memoriam, in Edmonton in 2017, curated by Ociciwan Contemporary Art Collective.^[19]

Personal life

Chacon lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and is married to Candice Hopkins, a Tagish curator. His sister Nani Chacon is a muralist.

Awards and honors

Chacon has received numerous awards and honors for his work, including the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for Music, an American Academy in Berlin Prize (music composition), a Creative Capital award (visual arts), a United States Artists fellowship (music), a Joan Mitchell Foundation fellowship,^[17] a Native Arts and Cultures Foundation artist fellowship,^[20] among others.^[4] Chacon received the inaugural Mellon Foundation Artist-in-Residence fellowship for the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center at Colorado College.^[21] In October 2023, Chacon was named a MacArthur Fellow.^[22]

Partial discography

• Inhale/Exhale (w/ Carlos Santistevan and Tatsuya Nakatani) (Other Minds Records, 2022)
• An Anthology of Chants Operations (Ouidah, 2020)
• Horse Notations (Cimiotti Recordings, 2020)
• Crisalide Fossile (w/ OvO) (Bronson, 2016)
• Your New Age Dream Contains More Blood Than You Can Imagine 12"LP (w/ Postcommodity) (Anarchymoon, 2011)
• Kitchen Sorcery (w/ Bob Bellerue) (Prison Tatt Records, 2011)
• At the Point Where the Rivers Crossed, We Drew Our Knives 12"LP (Anarchymoon, 2010)
• Black Streaked Hum (Lightning Speak/Featherspines, 2009)
• Overheard Songs (Innova, 2006)
• The Incredible 17000 km Split (split w/ Torturing Nurse) (8K Mob, 2006)
• Jesus Was a Wino (w/ Jeff Gburek) (Herbal Records, 2005)
• Still/life (Sicksicksick, 2004)
• Meet the Beatless (Sicksicksick, 2003)

Publications

• For Zitkála-Šá Toronto: Art Metropole.ISBN 9781989010167 Los Angeles: New Documents;ISBN 9781953441096. 2022.
• OEI #98-99: Aural Poetics Stockholm: OEI. 2023.

References

External links

• Official website
• Fellow Spotlight: Raven Chacon at the American Academy in Berlin
• 2022 Pulitzer Prizes

• v
• t
• e

Pulitzer Prize for Music

1943–1950

William Schuman ('43): A Free Song Howard Hanson ('44): Symphony No. 4 Aaron Copland ('45): Appalachian Spring Leo Sowerby ('46): The Canticle of the Sun Charles Ives ('47): Symphony No. 3 Walter Piston ('48): Symphony No. 3 Virgil Thomson ('49): Louisiana Story Gian Carlo Menotti ('50): The Consul

1951–1960

Douglas Moore ('51): Giants in the Earth Gail Kubik ('52): Symphony Concertante n.a. ('53) Quincy Porter ('54): Concerto Concertante Gian Carlo Menotti ('55): The Saint of Bleecker Street Ernst Toch ('56): Symphony No. 3 Norman Dello Joio ('57): Meditations on Ecclesiastes Samuel Barber ('58): Vanessa John La Montaine ('59): Piano Concerto No. 1 Elliott Carter ('60): String Quartet No. 2

1961–1970

Walter Piston ('61): Symphony No. 7 Robert Ward ('62): The Crucible Samuel Barber ('63): Piano Concerto n.a. ('64) n.a. ('65) Leslie Bassett ('66): Variations for Orchestra Leon Kirchner ('67): Quartet No. 3 for strings and electronic tape George Crumb ('68): Echoes of Time and the River Karel Husa ('69): String Quartet No. 3 Charles Wuorinen ('70): Time's Encomium

1971–1980

Mario Davidovsky ('71): Synchronisms No. 6 Jacob Druckman ('72): Windows Elliott Carter ('73): String Quartet No. 3 Donald Martino ('74): Notturno Dominick Argento ('75): From the Diary of Virginia Woolf Ned Rorem ('76): Air Music Richard Wernick ('77): Visions of Terror and Wonder Michael Colgrass ('78): Deja Vu Joseph Schwantner ('79): Aftertones of Infinity David Del Tredici ('80): In Memory of a Summer Day

1981–1990

n.a. ('81) Roger Sessions ('82): Concerto for Orchestra Ellen Taaffe Zwilich ('83): Symphony No. 1 Bernard Rands ('84): Canti del Sole Stephen Albert ('85): Symphony No. 1 George Perle ('86): Wind Quintet No. 4 John Harbison ('87): The Flight into Egypt William Bolcom ('88): Twelve New Etudes for Piano Roger Reynolds ('89): Whispers Out of Time Mel Powell ('90): Duplicates: A Concerto

1991–2000

Shulamit Ran ('91): Symphony Wayne Peterson ('92): The Face of the Night, the Heart of the Dark Christopher Rouse ('93): Trombone Concerto Gunther Schuller ('94): Of Reminiscences and Reflections Morton Gould ('95): Stringmusic George Walker ('96): Lilacs Wynton Marsalis ('97): Blood on the Fields Aaron Jay Kernis ('98): String Quartet No. 2 Melinda Wagner ('99): Concerto for Flute, Strings, and Percussion Lewis Spratlan ('00): Life Is a Dream

2001–2010

John Corigliano ('01): Symphony No. 2 Henry Brant ('02): Ice Field John Adams ('03): On the Transmigration of Souls Paul Moravec ('04): Tempest Fantasy Steven Stucky ('05): Second Concerto for Orchestra Yehudi Wyner ('06): Chiavi in Mano Ornette Coleman ('07): Sound Grammar David Lang ('08): The Little Match Girl Passion Steve Reich ('09): Double Sextet Jennifer Higdon ('10): Violin Concerto

2011–2020

Zhou Long ('11): Madame White Snake Kevin Puts ('12): Silent Night Caroline Shaw ('13): Partita for 8 Voices John Luther Adams ('14): Become Ocean Julia Wolfe ('15): Anthracite Fields Henry Threadgill ('16): In for a Penny, In for a Pound Du Yun ('17): Angel's Bone Kendrick Lamar ('18): DAMN. Ellen Reid ('19): Prism Anthony Davis ('20): The Central Park Five

2021–2030

Tania León ('21): Stride Raven Chacon ('22): Voiceless Mass Rhiannon Giddens and Michael Abels ('23): Omar

Special
citations

Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II for Oklahoma! (1944) Roger Sessions (1974) Scott Joplin (1976) Milton Babbitt (1982) William Schuman (1985) George Gershwin (1998) Duke Ellington (1999) Thelonious Monk (2006) John Coltrane (2007) Bob Dylan (2008) Hank Williams (2010) Aretha Franklin (2019)

• Complete list
• (1943–1950)
• (1951–1960)
• (1961–1970)
• (1971–1980)
• (1981–1990)
• (1991–2000)
• (2001–2010)
• (2011–2020)
• (Citations)