Composer gave José Luis Gomez and the a sneak peek last September of his first-ever orchestra work.
It made sense since the TSO was one of three orchestras that commissioned “Inscription” from the Pulitzer Prize winner.
Chacon will be in the audience this weekend when the orchestra performs the world premiere at 7:30 p.m. Friday, Feb. 21, and 2 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 23, at Linda Ronstadt Music Hall, 260 S. Church Ave.
TSO co-commissioned the piece with the American Composers Orchestra and Dallas Symphony Orchestra, which performed its world premiere earlier this month.
“This is the first time I’ve written for orchestra, for full orchestra, and probably the most instruments I’ve ever written for at one time,” ֱ native Chacon said last week as he waited to board a train for Yonkers from New York City. Chacon, who was born in ֱ and grew up in New Mexico, has lived in New York’s Hudson Valley for three years.
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Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Raven Chacon played parts of his first-ever orchestra piece with ֱ Symphony Orchestra and Conductor José Luis Gomez, right, last September.
Chacon said the work’s title comes from the symbols and notations he includes in his scores, techniques the longtime visual artist has used in his composing for 25 years.
“They have symbols that I’ve developed to help the performers understand the gesture that’s needed,” he explained. “That’s where the title comes from, this practice of drawing. … Sketching out the form of the piece, the shapes that occur in the piece, the directions of how sound might move in the concert hall, even the direction of how the violinist might bow their instrument. All of those begin with drawings.”
As for how it sounds … that’s a little tougher to answer, he admitted.
“It’s a funny, funny dilemma with music. I mean, I think music is one of the hardest things to write about or to speak about,” he said. “But I can tell you, at least attempt to describe it, by saying that it’s a very sparse work. In a sense, it moves very slowly, but at the same time, there’s a lot of activity happening simultaneously.”
Chacon said the work has chords that have “24 tones in them, 24 pitches, I should say,” and the instruments are all working together in different combinations “to produce these chords and harmonies.”
“The piece slowly shifts through different chambers, through different sonorities in relaying these tones to listeners,” he said.
This will be the second time a ֱ ensemble has premiered Chacon’s work. In October 2023, performed the Southwest premiere of his Pulitzer Prize-winning “Voiceless Mass.”
Gomez opens the orchestra’s “Dvořák and the American Experience” with Dvořák’s Slavonic Dance No. 2 and No. 8 before guest violinist Paul Huang performs the Czech composer’s Violin Concerto.
This is Huang’s encore to his spring 2022 TSO debut, which had been postponed two years earlier courtesy the pandemic. In fact, Huang was in ֱ in March 2020 when the city and cities worldwide shut everything down. Huang barely made it out as airlines dramatically limited flight schedules and airplane capacities.
The second half of this weekend’s concert represents the American experience with Chacon’s “Inscription” and William Grant Still’s Symphony No. 1 “Afro-American.”
Tickets are $14-$95 through .
Also this weekend
Fresh from their ֱ Desert Song Festival performance with Ballet ֱ, the husband-and-wife guitar duo of Misael Barraza-Diaz and Diana Schaible will perform a concert to raise money for the victims of the Los Angeles wildfires.
The pair will perform a concert of works ranging from classical sonatas to tango and flamenco tunes at 2 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 23, at Dove of Peace Lutheran Church, 665 W. Roller Coaster Road.
The performance is part of the church’s classical music concert series that raises money for local nonprofit organizations. The church never charges admission but collects donations from concertgoers.
Proceeds from donations on Sunday will go to ‘s work in LA.