Thursday, July 8th, ISSUE is pleased to stream the debut collaboration between Diné composer, performer, and installation artist Raven Chacon and New Zealand Māori composer, performer, improvisor, and anthropologist Rob Thorne. The duo’s debut work will stream on ISSUE’s site.

Both Chacon and Thorne have extensive histories using various high-pitched Indingenous wind instruments from their respective territories. Recently, Chacon has composed chamber works including Sweet Land, co-composed with Du Yun (commissioned and produced by The Industry) as well as Owl Song, for sinfonietta and voice (commissioned by Borealis Festival for Bit20 Ensemble). In 2020, Chacon released An Anthology of Chants Operations on the Ouidah label, a body of recordings drawn from across the last decade of his output capturing live performance, installation, and composition. Rob Thorne has maintained a broad solo and collaborative practice that includes cross-disciplinary works with Berlin based electronic composer Fis, Athenian pianist Tania Giannouli, The NZ String Quartet, and Orchestra Wellington, and in 2017, reimagined a pre-colonial dawn chorus in the field-based acousmatic work Te Koki. Recent work includes contributions to short-film Super Special, chamber opera He Pūtōrino Mākutu with Celeste Oram, and the Unsettling Scores series with Liquid Architecture. Currently a Research Fellow at the NZ School of Music, he has an upcoming album release with improvisor David Rothenberg (US) and vocalist Anna Fält (Sweden/Finland), as well as a creative commission with NZ Crown Research Institute Manaaki Whenua that seeks to express people’s nationally surveyed perceptions of how they relate to trees.