San Francisco Contemporary Music Players is performing the Bay Area premiere of Raven Chacon’s Pulitzer Prize-winning composition, Voiceless Mass, at Grace Cathedral on November 11, with a preshow talk with Chacon on how music is made. 

Chacon is a composer, performer, and installation artist from Fort Defiance, Navajo Nation. His mesmerizing, original work for organ and ensemble, Voiceless Mass, considers the spaces in which we gather, the history of access of these spaces, and the land upon which these buildings sit. In exploiting the architecture of the cathedral, Voiceless Mass considers the futility of giving voice to the voiceless, when ceding space is never an option for those in power.  

At The Forum the next morning, join Malcolm Young for a conversation with Chacon about his career as an artist and mentor; and how his heritage influences his work. 

The Forum will be posted on our Youtube and Apple Podcast channels.    

Watch

First Native American composer to win Pulitzer Prize on his experimental process

About the Guest

Raven Chacon (b. 1977) is a Pulitzer Prize-winning composer, performer, and installation artist from Fort Defiance, Navajo Nation. Currently, he lives in Red Hook, New York and Albuquerque, NM. A recording artist over the span of 22 years, Chacon has appeared on over eighty releases on national and international labels. He has exhibited, performed, or had works performed at LACMA, The Whitney Biennial, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, SITE Santa Fe, The Kennedy Center, and more. As an educator, Chacon is the senior composer mentor for the Native American Composer Apprentice Project (NACAP). 

About the Moderator

The Very Rev. Dr. Malcolm Clemens Young is the dean of Grace Cathedral. He is the author of The Spiritual Journal of Henry David Thoreau and The Invisible Hand in Wilderness: Economics, Ecology, and God, and is a regular contributor on religion to the Huffington Post and San Francisco Examiner.    

About The Forum

The Forum is a series of stimulating conversations about faith and ethics in relation to the important issues of our day. We invite inspiring and illustrious people to sit down for a real conversation with the Forum’s host and with you. Our guests range from artists, inventors, and philosophers to pop culturists and elected officials, but the point of The Forum is singular: civil, sophisticated discourse that engages minds and hearts to think in new ways about the world.  More about Grace Forum Online.

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