Call for the Company

Diné (Navajo) composer, musician and artist Raven Chacon will present a concert programme composed of scores that experiment with instruments and instrumentations, from guns and dog whistles to a piece for ‘a variety of 8 trumpets’. Chacon’s work comments on the legacy of colonialism and its enduring effects on Indigenous people in the United States.

Raven Chacon is the first Indigenous composer to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music (with his composition Voiceless Mass, 2021). Rhythm, acoustics and concepts play a central role in Chacon’s work. Report (2001), for instance, a score for a firearm ensemble, is composed of gunshots, while Call for the Company in the Morning (2022), a piece for eight trumpeters, that is led by the commissioner of the piece, Marco Blaauw, refers to hunting. In this radical work, trumpeters play a single pitch most of the time, referencing British hunting signal manuals for communicating with other hunters participating in the inhumane ‘sport’. In the piece, this tone alternates with solos that give voice to the hunted animals. 

The series of scores For Zitkála-Šá (2017-2020) is dedicated to Zitkála-Šá, a compelling figure in Native American history. Zitkála-Šá, a Yankton Dakota writer, editor, translator, musician, educator, and political activist has been noted as one of the most influential Native American activists of the 20th century. As an orator, her speeches brought awareness to the systemic oppression of Native people. As a composer and musician, Zitkála-Šá taught violin, later writing the libretto and songs for The Sun Dance Opera (1913), the first American Indian opera.

The composition Whistle Quartet (2001) was, expressly, written to be played on dog whistles and refers to the ways in which people become part of a group by learning from a leader, or an elder. 

As part of the concert program, an improvisation session of Chacon, with three guest musicians and collaborators invited by him, will be staged in a way that makes optimal use of the various locations inside and outside the Muziekgebouw concert hall. 

The performance begins with a small intervention by 'elder' Glenn Helberg.

PROGRAMME BOOK