American Ledger 1 Live at ABQ Museum 2025 – Soundings

516 ARTS & Chatter presented American Ledger No. 1 as a narrative score for performance, telling the creation story of the founding of the United States of America. In chronological descending order, moments of contact, enactment of laws, events of violence, the building of cities, and erasure of land and worldview were mediated through graphic notation, and realized by sustaining and percussive instruments, coins, axe and wood, a police whistle, and a match. The score was displayed as a flag, a wall, a blanket, a billboard, or a door. For many players with sustaining and percussive instruments, coins, axe and wood, a police whistle, and a match.

This performance was part of the exhibition Soundings: An Exhibition in Five Parts.

This performance took place at the Albuquerque Museum – 2000 Mountain Rd. N.W., Albuquerque, NM 87104 – through Chatter’s Free Museum Summer Series.

About the artist: Raven Chacon is a Diné composer, musician and artist. Born in Fort Defiance, Arizona within the Navajo Nation, Chacon became the first Native American to win a Pulitzer Prize for Music, for his Voiceless Mass in 2022. Also, in October 2023, Chacon was named a MacArthur Fellow.