The last time Diné composer Raven Chacon had one of his pieces performed at Present Music’s annual Thanksgiving concert, he won a Pulitzer Prize. Now, he returns to Milwaukee as part of the music nonprofit’s “Simple Songs” concert.
The concert will be held at 5 p.m. on Sunday, Nov. 19 at the Cathedral of Saint John the Evangelist (812 N. Jackson St.) and will also be broadcast live online via the Present Music Digital Stage.
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Chacon, who became the first Native American awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Music for his Present Music-commissioned piece Voiceless Mass, will be in attendance for the performance of his 2021 piece Owl Song. He will also participate in a pre-concert discussion at 4 p.m. about the evolution of his work and how winning the Pulitzer Prize and MacArthur Fellow awards has affected his creative process. Present Music Co-Artistic Director David Bloom will moderate the session in the church atrium.
The decades-long Thanksgiving concert tradition is returning through presenting sponsors Ellen and Joe Checota.
“Thanksgiving is the perfect time to explore that most familiar and significant of musical forms: song,” Bloom said. “The emotional directness of a great song lends it a certain simplicity, but there’s nothing easy about making one.”
Chacon is a composer, performer and visual artist who creates videos, prints, photographs and installations that bring sonic experimentation into the gallery. He encourages generous forms of collaboration among performers and audiences, sites of significance, nonhuman actors, found sounds and natural elements. In this way, he connects Diné, or Navajo, world views and relationship models with Western classical, avant-garde and art-music traditions.
The concert will also feature Simple Songs, performed by popular soprano Ariadne Greif and composed by Aaron Jay Kernis. The piece, commissioned for Present Music by a local patron, epitomizes the theme of the concert: different cultures sharing a common spirituality. Its text settings are drawn from the Book of Psalms, the 12th-century abbess Hildegard of Bingen, the Japanese Zen master Ryōkan and the famous Sufi poet Rumi.
The night will also be the world premiere of Staircase Variations, which was commissioned for Present Music by The Two Sisters, long-time patrons of the nonprofit. Bloom will conduct the piece, which was composed by Milwaukeean Brian Packham, who describes it as “a gradual metamorphosis from complex and competing relationships to a more authentic and universal truth,” according to a press release.
Rounding out the program will be an orchestral version of ko’u inca by Leilahua Lanzilotti, which is based on a Hawaiian anthem and is a homesick statement about the meaning of identity. In addition, Bucks Native American Singing and Drumming group will perform an opening song and a friendship circle to close out the night.
Tickets and livestream information can be found at Present Music.
