Composer Raven Chacon’s New Commissioned Work Debuting at Yale Schwarzman Center and other venues

Two Public Performances April 4 & 8 

NEW HAVEN, Conn. – March 13, 2025 – Diné composer, musician, and artist Raven Chacon, the first Native American recipient of the Pulitzer Prize in Music, brings his landmark work to New Haven for a multivenue engagement: Raven Chacon at Yale. From April 4–8, Chacon and his wide body of work will be featured in a range of performances, and discussions that offer students, artists and the broader New Haven community several opportunities to explore his multidisciplinary approach to composition and sound. All events are free and open to the public, but registration is required. 

Born at Fort Defiance Navajo Nation, Chacon’s recordings span 22 years, and his work appears on more than 80 releases on national and international labels. He has exhibited, performed, or had works performed at LACMA, The Whitney Biennial, Borealis Festival, SITE Santa Fe, The Kennedy Center, and more. As an educator, Chacon is the senior composer mentor for the Native American Composer Apprentice Project (NACAP). In 2022, he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in Music for his composition Voiceless Mass, and in 2023 was awarded the MacArthur Fellowship. 

Highlights of his New Haven engagement include: 

Friday, April 4 at 7pm:  To celebrate the five-year anniversary of the Yale Center for Collaborative Arts and Media (CCAM)Sound Art Series, Chacon will offer a solo performance in the CCAM Leeds Studio, along with a conversation with Ross Wightman, CCAM technical manager and faculty member at Yale School of Art, and a Q&A session with the audience. Learn More 

“I’m thrilled to welcome Raven back to the CCAM Sound Art Series for our five-year anniversary,” said Wightman, who founded, curates, and produces the series. “His work is a profound inspiration, and it has been incredibly rewarding to bring together interdisciplinary partners across Yale to present a glimpse into Raven’s visionary and expansive artistic world.” 

Tuesday, April 8 at 7:30pm: Headlining Chacon’s time in New Haven is a performance at the Yale Schwarzman Center Dome featuring Chacon’s earlier works performed by a blend of Yale students, staff, faculty, alumni, and New Haven community members. The program features Mirror Quintet, For Heidi Senungetuk from For Zitkála-Šá, Invisible Arc, and the debut of a Yale Schwarzman Center commissioned work for solo bass written for Wightman. Register Here  

The program also features one of Chacon’s best-known works, American Ledger No. 1, a narrative score for performance mediated through graphic notation that tells the creation story of the founding of the United States of America, exploring moments of contact, enactment of laws, events of violence, the building of cities, and erasure of land and worldview. 

“Raven Chacon’s work exemplifies contemporary artists who push assumptions of composition, and performance” remarked Jennifer Harrison Newman, associate artistic director at Yale Schwarzman Center. “This is evident in all of his work but especially in American Ledger No. 1. where his choice of texture- physical and sonic – combined with the unique acoustic elements of our Dome space, create a singular opportunity to contemplate the American project.” 

Raven Chacon at Yale is a series of multidisciplinary engagements from April 3-8, initiated by the Yale Center for Collaborative Arts and Media (CCAM) Sound Art Series and produced in partnership with Yale Schwarzman Center, the Yale Peabody Museum, the Yale University Art Gallery, the Yale School of Music, the Music in Schools Initiative, and the Yale College Department of Music’s New Music Fund.