Raven Chacon


Raven Chacon is a Diné composer and artist. He is known as a composer of chamber music as well as a solo performer of noise music. He is one of the most profiled Native Americans currently working in either genre.

Biography

Chacon was a student of James Tenney, Morton Subotnick, Michael Pisaro and Wadada Leo Smith.
Chacon was a member of the American Indian art collective, Postcommodity, with whom he has developed multimedia installations which have been exhibited internationally. His collective and solo work has been presented at Sydney Biennale, Kennedy Center, documenta, Adelaide International, Vancouver Art Gallery, Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal, The San Francisco Electronic Music Festival, Chaco Canyon, and Performance Today.
Chacon also performs in the groups KILT with Bob Bellerue, Mesa Ritual with William Fowler Collins, Endlings with John Dieterich, and collaborations with Laura Ortman. In 2016, he was commissioned by Kronos Quartet to compose a work for their Fifty For The Future project.
Chacon serves as Composer-in-Residence with the Native American Composers Apprenticeship Project. In 2012 he was awarded a Creative Capital Visual Arts grant. In 2014, he was honored with a Native Arts and Cultures Foundation National Artist Fellowship in Music. In 2018, Chacon was awarded the Berlin Prize by the American Academy in Berlin.

Personal

Chacon lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and is married to Candice Hopkins, a Tagish curator. His sister Nani Chacon is a muralist.

Partial discography