Contemporary Music Ensemble

Saturday, March 7, 2026 at 7:00pm CST

Alice Millar Chapel

Raven Chacon, guest composer; Ben Bolter and Shihan Jin, conductors; Michaela Marchi, vocalist

Presented in partnership with the Center for Native Futures, the Center for Native American and Indigenous Research, and the School of Communication’s MA in Sound Arts and Industries    

The program includes Raven Chacon’s 2022 Pulitzer Prize-winning Voiceless Mass, a work designed to utilize a house of worship with musicians spread out across the space, employing its architecture to illustrate the complex legacy of the Catholic Church and its treatment of Native Americans. In Chacon’s words, Voiceless Mass “considers the spaces in which we gather, the history of access of these spaces, and the land upon which these buildings sit.” Isleta Pueblo singer Michaela Marchi joins the ensemble for Chacon’s Owl Song, “an acknowledgment of the nocturnal hunting bird, considered by some to have the ability of shapeshifting,” as the composer explains. Also on the program are György Ligeti’s Organ Study No.1: Harmonies and Jessie Cox’s Quantify.