Apr 07 2024

Performance | Vertical Neighbors by Raven Chacon

Sun | 4PM

Please join us for the public activation of Raven Chacon’s Vertical Neighbors, a newly commissioned large-scale outdoor score currently installed on SI’s facade. This performance takes place on the occasion of Chacon’s solo exhibition at SI, A Worm’s Eye View from a Bird’s Beak. Vertical Neighbors is a composition for pairs of the same brass horn instrument. The score exists as a set of murals, visible to one or more musicians on the ground and their counterparts in an elevated position. A performance of this composition becomes an acknowledgement of vertical orientations as temporal relationships, aligning past and future knowledge.

Please RSVP to rsvp@swissinstitute.net.

Accessibility note: This program contains loud and sudden sounds.

Raven Chacon was born at Fort Defiance, Navajo Nation in 1977. Since 1999 he has toured the United States with various solo and group projects, composed chamber works, and developed a curriculum for the Native American Composer Apprentice Project, an education initiative to mentor young composers on the Navajo, Hopi and Salt River Pima reservations. As a solo artist, Chacon has exhibited at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (2020); the Renaissance Society, Chicago (2020); and the Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2022); amongst many others. He has performed or had works performed at the San Francisco Electronic Music Festival (2013); Borealis Festival, Bergen, Norway (2021); Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, UK (2022); the Perelman Performing Arts Center, New York (2023); Holland Festival, Amsterdam, NL (2023); and Ostrava Festival, Ostrava, CZ (2023); in addition to hundreds of concerts over the past 25 years. In 2022, Chacon received the Pulitzer Prize in Music for his composition Voiceless Mass, and in 2023 he was awarded the MacArthur Fellowship.

Led by trombonist and composer Chris McIntyre, TILT Brass is a Brooklyn-based organization dedicated to transforming what and where contemporary brass ensembles perform. For over 20 years, TILT has produced inventive concert programs that eschew common chamber and large ensemble repertoire, premiering works by artists including Zeena Parkins, Holly Herndon, David Behrman, Anthony Coleman, John King, Enno Poppe, James Tenney, and the modern premiere of Julius Eastman’s Trumpet (1970). TILT’s various ensemble configurations have been heard in venues and locations throughout NYC including The Kitchen, ISSUE Project Room, Whitney Museum, Tonic, Joe’s Pub, Park Avenue Armory (Merce Cunningham Co. finale, 2011), Lincoln Center Plaza, Federal Plaza, and The Lake at Central Park.

Christopher McIntyre is a Brooklyn-based trombonist, curator, composer, band leader, and educator. Known for his involvement in Julius Eastman’s music, Chris serves as Director of TILT Brass (co-founder in 2003) and as Curator and trombonist for Either/Or Ensemble. He specializes in ensemble work meshing improvisative & interpretive material as a player and as a composer and music director. He regularly performs in groups such as TILT, Either/Or, SEM and Talea Ensembles, and American Composers Orchestra, among many others. McIntyre leads an active career as an independent concert programmer in New York (The Kitchen, MATA Festival, Ne(x)tworks, and ISSUE Project Room) and currently teaches at Mannes School of Music at The New School and in the ACO’s Teaching Artist program.

Image caption: Raven Chacon, Vertical Neighbors, 2024. Courtesy of the Artist