Walking into the Linda Ronstadt Music Hall in Tucson, Arizona, my mind goes back to when I was a child growing up in “Old Pueblo,” Tucson’s nickname. As a four-year-old kid, Tucson was desert, cactus, and tarantulas. But also, music. Both my parents were active in the musical scene, performing in various theatrical events and operas.
Since the mid-70s, Tucson has come a long way. Originally called Tucson Music Hall (the venue that houses the symphony), the name was changed in 2022 after Tucson’s famous daughter, popstar, Linda Ronstadt. I wasn’t in Tucson to hear Ronstadt, but another Arizona native, Pulitzer-Prize winning composer, Raven Chacon.
The Linda Ronstadt Music Hall, Tucson, Arizona. | Provided
Chacon (an Albuquerque resident) premiered his first orchestral work, Inscription, with the Tucson Symphony Orchestra (TSO). Inscription is a TSO co-commission with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra and the American Composers Orchestra.
Raven Chacon Inscription. | Provided
Before the performance, Chacon was invited by conductor José Luis Gomez to address the audience to discuss the work.
Chacon states, “Dallas Symphony Orchestra hit me up to write a new piece. Around the same time, Tucson Symphony did the same thing. I said to myself, I’m not going to write two of these things. Because I’ve never written for orchestra before, this is the first one, [I brought the two requests together]. There’s lots of shapes [in the composition], that’s why it’s called Inscription. Though I don’t consider myself a visual artist, I like to draw. I handwrote all the notes on the score. The title comes from the practice of drawing.”
Clarifying further the inspiration behind Inscription, Chacon tells KERA News in Dallas, Texas: “It relates to these petroglyphs. These pictographs that are etched into this volcanic rock on the westside of Albuquerque, New Mexico, where I'm from.
“These drawings were made by my ancestors over 1,000 years ago. I've been going to this site since I was a teenager and just spending time out there looking at these, wondering what they mean, why they were made.
“To me, they look like musical prompts. They look like they could be bowings for a violin or a vibrato for a bass clarinet. I began a kind of practice of altering them or envisioning them as notations to give to other musicians. So my drawings of those have occurred in previous works and some of those end up in Inscription as well.”
Being that I live at the base of the Petroglyphs in Albuquerque, I was thrilled Chacon was setting music to the land I love.
Concerning Chacon’s practice of presenting a visual score, the first book about his musical compositions, Raven Chacon: A Worm’s Eve View From as Bird’s Beak (MIT Press), addresses his unique graphic notation, where symbols are used to mimic sounds or give directions for the performance.
Composing Inscription Chacon told the Tucson Symphony Orchestra, “It was such an immense project that I worked on it over a year, adding bits at a time. Adjusting, editing, trying different configurations until I ultimately found what it was to be. I think writing in this manner allowed me to find a form that I wouldn’t have guessed could exist. I’m not going to say it’s randomization; I’m not rolling the dice and saying this is what it’s going to be, but rather it’s rolling the dice and saying this is something I could try, and that’s very liberating.”
For my part, I found Inscription stunning, incorporating exploratory sonic architecture and micro-tonality, representing the Petroglyph National Monument landscape well, sometimes dark, other times illuminating. Minimalistic, Inscription carried a numinous presence, something deep and introspective. The orchestra was asked to push their instrumentations beyond traditional performance, incorporating extended technique, which uses unconventional methods to produce distinctive sounds. At times wind-like, then earth-bound, the performance was ethereal.
Conductor José Luis Gomez called Inscription a “sonic experience,” something that happens in the brain evoking an internal response. The TSO program agrees, stating Chacon “invites us to re-imagine our aural environment.”
After the performance I connected with Chacon. He tells me about a forthcoming performance of Voiceless Mass (his Pulitzer-winning work) at Pro Musica In Santa Fe, March 15-16. He also alludes to another composition he’s working on, of which shall remain quiet for the time. But if one thing is certain, Chacon’s voice is not silent, and his work as a musician is something to behold—both visually and sonically: he’s an innovative and creative composer, offering the world new sounds, vision, and voice, a walk in beauty.
Brian C. Nixon, Ph.D., is Chief Academic Officer and professor at Veritas International University in Albuquerque. As a writer, musician, and artist, his interests surround the philosophical transcendentals: truth, beauty, and goodness. You can contact Brian via his Bandcamp email address: https://briancharlesnixon.bandcamp.com
