Composer Raven Chacon spoke to the audience when the Tucson Symphony Orchestra and Music Director José Luis Gomez performed his new “Inscription.” Photo by Jessica Caraballo.
In Monday’s (2/24) Tucson.com (Arizona), Cathalena E. Burch writes, “Tucson Symphony Orchestra on Sunday afternoon had asked composer Raven Chacon to come onstage and shed some light on the music they were about to perform…. There is no real story behind ‘Inscription,’ Chacon told Sunday’s full house at Linda Ronstadt Music Hall. It’s just music for the sake of music. But some people in places like Europe or the East Coast have told him they can hear the desert of his native Arizona in his music. Maybe it was the seed he planted, but we, too, could hear the eerie silence of the desert in ‘Inscription,’ a work that TSO co-commissioned last year with American Composers Orchestra and Dallas Symphony Orchestra…. ‘Inscription’ opened the second half of the TSO’s ‘Dvořák and the American Experience’ concert, which featured … impressive violinist Paul Huang performing Dvořák’s Violin Concerto in A minor…. [TSO Music Director José Luis] Gomez’s shining moment in the concert came in the TSO’s first-ever performance of William Grant Still’s Symphony No. 1 ‘Afro-American.’ It’s hard to believe Tucson has never experienced this wonderful work by America’s dean of African-American composers. The half-hour symphony is filled with beautiful jazz and blues rhythms woven into the tapestry of early 20th century classical writing.”
