With his Voiceless Mass, Raven Chacon became the first Native American winner of the Pulitzer Prize in Music. Chacon, from Fort Defiance, Navajo Nation (Arizona), has had performances in prestigious halls all over the world including Washington DC, Berlin, San Francisco, Sydney, Los Angeles and New York. He has written for and/or collaborated with The Kronos Quartet and Yo-Yo Ma amongst others. Since 2004, he has mentored over 300 high school Native composers in the writing of new string quartets for the Native American Composer Apprenticeship Project. A concentrated and powerful musical expression leaving a haunting, visceral impact, Voiceless Mass for pipe organ and instrumental ensemble evokes the weight of history in a church setting. This work considers the spaces in which we gather, the history of access to these spaces and the land upon which these buildings sit.

Songs of America, a signature repertoire for True Concord, includes African-American Spirituals arranged by Moses Hogan and William Grant Still, folk songs by Stephen Foster, including Beautiful Dreamer and Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair and music of the Sonoran Desert. New this season, True Concord selected poetry through a nation-wide competition with assistance from the UA Poetry Center. The inaugural winning poet is Janet Ruth, whose poem will be set to music by Nicholas Ryan Kelly, the latest winner of the Stephen Paulus Emerging Composers Competition. Learn more about the artists here.

Don’t miss the exhibition by True Concord’s new partner, MOCA Tucson: Raven Chacon: While hissing—on view from March 24 through November 2023, presenting two important bodies of work from the visionary artist and composer.