Arts and Letters

As a student at CalArts in the early aughts, Raven Chacon studied with renowned composer-performer Wadada Leo Smith. The creative agency of Smith’s Ankhrasmation Symbolic Music Language inspired Chacon to develop compositions that give performers autonomy in choosing what they play. Twenty years later, the two artists share a joint concert at Arts and Letters, where each has a solo exhibition on view as part of our fall program.

The concert begins in the Arts and Letters Library with two compositions by Chacon, Journey of the Horizontal People (2016) and Double Weaving (2018), followed by Smith’s String Quartet No. 17 (2022–23), premiering in its complete string quartet version. It concludes in the North Gallery with a performance by Chacon on guitar and Smith on trumpet.

Smith’s RedKoral Quartet will perform the compositions by Smith and Chacon. It is the first time they will play the work of a composer other than Smith. The members of RedKoral are Andrew McIntosh (viola), Mona Tian (violin), Shalini Vijayan (violin), and Ashley Walters (cello).

Concert admission is $10, and reduced-price tickets are available for students and those who need them. Before the concert, we invite you to visit our fall exhibitions: Raven Chacon’s Aviary, Wadada Leo Smith’s Kosmic Music, and Christine Kozlov.

Raven Chacon (b. 1977, Fort Defiance, Navajo Nation) is a composer, performer, and artist. Since 1999 he has toured with various solo and group projects, composed chamber works, and developed a curriculum for the Native American Composer Apprentice Project, an initiative to mentor young composers on Navajo, Hopi, and Salt River Pima reservations. From 2009 to 2018, Chacon was a member of Postcommodity, co-creating 22 art installations with the group, which were exhibited internationally. In 2022, he was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in Music for his composition Voiceless Mass; in 2023, he received a MacArthur Fellowship.

Wadada Leo Smith (b. 1941, Leland, MS) is a composer-performer and Arts and Letters member. Smith began playing the trumpet and composing at the age of 12 and grew up steeped in the musical traditions of the South, performing in Delta Blues and other traditional bands. He studied music in the US Military Bands program and at Sherwood School of Music and Wesleyan University. During the 1960s and early 1970s, Smith lived in Chicago, where he became a central member of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Music (AACM). From 1994 to 2013, he directed the African American Improvisational Music program at the Herb Alpert School of Music at CalArts. His honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship (2009–10) and a Doris Duke Artist Award (2016). In 2013, he was named a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Music.

RedKoral is a string quartet devoted to playing Wadada Leo Smith’s music. Since Smith founded the quartet in 2012, RedKoral has performed with him at festivals and concerts in Europe, Brazil, and throughout the United States. Their recordings include Smith's String Quartets Nos. 1–12 (2022) and Rosa Parks: Pure Love. An Oratorio of Seven Songs (2019).