Musical Prompts

Forget the ticking of your watch – here, music doesn’t rush forward; it bites into the now. Composers Raven Chacon, Tyshawn Sorey, Annea Lockwood and George Lewis ask us to listen differently: what remains when the noise falls away?

Raven Chacon, the first Native American Pulitzer winner, usually tackles history and politics. With Inscription, however, he lets the music speak for itself. Inspired by 1000-year-old New Mexican petroglyphs, he treats ancient rock art as musical prompts: 'They looked like violin cues or bass clarinet vibratos to me.' Breaking from rigid tradition, Chacon uses graphic scores and microtones, treating every orchestral player as an 'autonomous sound-maker.'

Then, the tempo drops to a near-standstill. Tyshawn Sorey’s Adagio (For Wadada Leo Smith) is a monumental lesson in patience, moving with the majestic, imperceptible crawl of a glacier. Amidst the near-silence, a slowly rotating alto sax melody offers a steady hand to hold.

But silence is an illusion. Unless time stops, the world – nature, the city, our own bodies – is always loud. These are the raw materials of Annea Lockwood. In Saouah!, she blurs the lines between voice, breath, and instrument, inviting us to stop hunting for harmony and start feeling the physical resonance of sound itself.

Finally, George Lewis explores time as 'wear and tear': “Weathering mirrors the stamina needed to endure systemic racism – the chronic stress of a permanent 'fight or flight' mode. I hope my music does noy cause stress, but sparks empathy. After all, this kind of weathering affects us all."