European premiere of Raven Chacon's Voiceless Mass: A concert with works by Raven Chacon and Elina Waage Mikalsen

European premiere of Raven Chacon’s Voiceless Mass: A concert with works by Raven Chacon and Elina Waage Mikalsen 

Nordnorsk Kunstmuseum, in collaboration with Arktisk Filharmoni and Bodø 2024, is proud to present a unique concert in Bodø Cathedral featuring Ravon Chacon’s Pulitzer Prize-winning composition, Voiceless Mass, as part of the exhibition, Raven Chacon: A Worm’s Eye View from a Bird’s Beak.  

Accompanying his first solo museum exhibition in Europe at Nordnorsk Kunstmuseum in Tromsø, Raven Chacon will come to Bodø/Buvvda/Bådåddjo for the performance of his compositions, Voiceless Mass and Biyán. The concert programme will also feature an extended improvisational set by Elina Waage Mikalsen.  

​Date: Friday 7 June 2024
Concert in Bodø Cathedral at 18.00 -19.00
Ticket price: 350,-
Concert tickets can be purchased online at Stormen konserthus: Ticket booking 

This is the premiere performance of Chacon’s award-winning work in Europe. Chacon’s Voiceless Mass (2021) was a site-specific commission for the annual Thanksgiving concert hosted by Present Music at The Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. It was composed specifically for the organ at the cathedral and it uses the space of the church, an institution that has played a crucial role in the extinguishing of Native American culture to consider that legacy and how it reverberates in the present. Performing the piece in Bodø/Buvvda/Bådåddjo draws parallels between Sámi and global Indigneous experiences, strengthening the links and networks of solidarity that can lead to empowered Indigenous futures.  

The performance of Voiceless Mass will be accompanied by another of Chacon’s works, Biyán. Biyán takes its title from the Navajo word for ‘song’. In Chacon’s own words, moments of the composition repeat in the same way that a song might repeat if it were to be sung all night.  

Biography: 

Raven Chacon is a composer, performer, and installation artist born at Fort Defiance, Navajo Nation. A recording artist over the span of 22 years, Chacon has appeared on over eighty releases on national and international labels. He has exhibited, performed, or had works performed at Documenta 14, at LACMA, The Whitney Biennial, Borealis Festival, SITE Santa Fe, The Kennedy Center, and more. As an educator, Chacon is the senior composer mentor for the Native American Composer Apprentice Project (NACAP). In 2022, he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in Music for his composition, Voiceless Mass, and in 2023 was awarded the MacArthur Fellowship. 

ELINA WAAGE MIKALSEN. Photo: Merethe Flaate

Elina Waage Mikalsen is a sound artist from Romssa/Tromsø, Northern Norway/ Sápmi. With her improvised sets Mikalsen creates sonic spaces somewhere between reality and fantasy, with sound textures that move between the fluid, the noisy and the sacred. With the traditional weaving instrument suohponstuolet, once belonging to Mikalsen’s áhkku (grandmother), she has created an instrument that brings out the sound of a material and a spirit. Together with vocals, effects and field recordings, this constitutes the stem for her music, which does not move forward, but in circles.