Native Voice Chamber Music will be performed at UMW on October 6 and at the Smithsonian’s magnificent Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) on October 6 at 2:00 p.m. Performed by the UMW Chamber ensemble, this concert will feature the music of Louis W. Ballard (Quapaw/Cherokee), the grandfather of American Indian composers, and Raven chacon (Navajo), one of the vanguard composers of the younger generation. Mr. Chacon will be present for the NMAI performance.
In November, Native Voices will feature the full, fifty-member Wind and Percussion Ensemble presenting the music of composers Louis W. Ballard (Quapaw/Cherokee), Raven chacon (Navajo), Barbara Croall (Odawa), and Brent Michael Davids (Mohican). This concert will feature the world premieres of new works commissioned by the Ensemble composed by Raven chacon and Barbara Croall.
This concert will also tour to NMAI on November 18. This day will feature the UMW debut at the Kennedy Center as the Ensemble performs on the Millennium Stage at 6:00.
Native Voices is generously made possible through the support of the following organizations:
- The UMW Department of Music
- The Virginia Commission for the Arts
- The National Museum of the American Indian
- The Embassy of Canada
- The Kennedy Center
- The James Farmer Multicultural Center
- The American Composers Forum (First Nations Composers Initiative)
- The National Band Association
- The First Nations Development Institute
- The UMW Office of the Dean of the Faculty
Brief Composer Biographies
Barbara Croall is a graduate of the Hochschule fur Musik in Munich, Germany and holds a Bachelor of Music in Composition from the University of Toronto, where she was a recipient for the Glenn Gould Award in Composition. In the 1997 July issue of Maclean's magazine she was acclaimed as one of "100 Canadians to Watch" for her musical accomplishments. She is also active as Artistic Director of ERGO, an internationally based association for the promotion of contemporary music in Canada and abroad.
Many of her works draw on her native heritage from a sincere standpoint that attempts to reconcile the assimilation process experienced by aboriginal Canadians. Her works have been performed across Canada, by groups including the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, as well as numerous works written for dance.
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Originally from Chinle, Arizona, on the Navajo Nation, Raven Chacon is one of the few avant-garde and experimental composers working in the world today. Chacon has recorded many works for classical and electronic instruments and ensembles and has had many performances and exhibits of his work across the southwest. Currently living in Los Angeles, much of his music involves homemade microphones and instruments to provide a noise environment in a live or installed performance. Chacon's all-chamber music disc, Beesh Naalnishi, was released in 2004.
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Composer and Clinician Louis W. Ballard, aka Honganozhe, [his Quapaw name meaning "Stands with Eagles"], was born near Quapaw, Oklahoma, in the Native American Indian community of Devil's Promenade. He is recognized as a preeminent American composer, whose works have also been performed in Argentina, Austria, England, China, Czechoslovakia, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Russia and Spain. He has many credits in North America as a composer with major premieres at Carnegie Hall, Eastman-Rochester Symphony Hall, Lincoln Center, Tyrone Guthrie Theater, JFK Performing Arts Center and Grady Gammage Auditorium with radio broadcasts over Canadian Broadcasting System, Voice of America, National Public Radio, WNYC, besides European broadcasts at Radio France and Deutsch Welle. |
He has won grant awards from the Martha Baird Rockefeller Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, Lila Wallace Foundation, Meet the Composer, Ford Foundation, Harkness Ballet, American Composers Orchestra, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, Philadelphia Orchestra, Tulsa Philharmonic and the First Marion Nevins MacDowell Award for American Chamber Music.
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Brent Michael Davids, a member of the Mohican Nation, is an internationally recognized composer whose music features elements of Native American tribal music combined with Western compositional techniques. Davids has composed for very different ensembles such as the Kronos Quartet (The Singing Woods, ‘94; Turtle People, ‘95; Native American National Anthem, ‘96); the Joffrey Ballet (Moon of the Falling Leaves, ‘91), and the National Symphony Orchestra (Canyon Sunrise, ‘95), Davids has received numerous awards from organizations such as the NEA, Meet the Composer, American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Sundance Institute. |
