Vancouver New Music presents the Vancouver premiere of Diné composer Raven Chacon’s 2022 Pulitzer Prize winning piece Voiceless Mass, for 12 musicians. Notably, Chacon is the first Indigenous composer to win a Pulitzer Prize for music. With Voiceless Mass Chacon has created a story without words and “mass without sung voices in the guise of an organ concerto” (LA Times).

The piece creates space for historically “unsung” voices to remake the weighted space of the church. Chacon says of his piece, “[t]his work considers the spaces in which we gather, the history of access of these spaces, and the land upon which these buildings sit. Though ‘mass’ is referenced in the title, the piece contains no audible singing voices, instead using the openness of the large space to intone the constricted intervals of the wind and string instruments. 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.”

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”.

Inspired some by Cardew’s Treatise, but more so of course by Navajo and Pueblo iconographies, particularly the ancient petroglyphs carved in the volcanic rock on the west side of Albuquerque. The piece however came about as a reaction to some listeners (or performers of my early works) believing that they should be hearing some kind of “Native American influence” in my music. Whatever that meant (to them). 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. There is no instruction or expectation for them to necessarily produce a particular style of music, (not in this piece, nor elsewhere either really), but 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

Program

…lahgo adil’i dine doo yeehosinilgii yidaaghi (23 min)
Voiceless Mass (20 min)

Performed by Mark McGregor, Flute; Liam Hockley, Clarinet; AK Coope, Bass Clarinet; Katie Rife and Jade Hails, Percussion; Angelique Po, Pipe Organ; Llowyn Ball and Molly MacKinnon, Violin; Parmela Attariwala, Viola; Marina Hasselberg, Cello; Meaghan Williams, Contrabass; Stefan Maier, Electronics; Giorgio Magnanensi, Conductor