On June 15, the Orchestra of New Music, conducted by Szymon Bywalec, presented a thought-provoking program titled “Borders of Cultural Identity” at NOSPR in Katowice. The concert featured Polish premieres of works by Nikolet Burzyńska, Monika Szpyrka, Cristian Lolea, and Raven Chacon, each exploring themes of community, belonging, and identity through contemporary sound.
Monika Szpyrka’s Comme un soupir étouffé referenced Renaissance and Baroque idioms as a metaphor for communal breath and historical memory. In Unconcerted, Nikolet Burzyńska imagined a decentralized sonic world, where distinct voices coexist freely and without dominance. Cristian Lolea, a Romanian composer long based in Poland, reflected on his personal and cultural journey in Polaroid, a musical snapshot of identity shaped by place and experience.
Raven Chacon is a Diné (Navajo) composer, performer, and visual artist whose interdisciplinary work bridges Indigenous worldviews with avant-garde and experimental traditions. He is the first Native American to receive the Pulitzer Prize in Music, awarded in 2022 for Voiceless Mass. Chacon’s work often employs graphic notation and nontraditional instrumentation, expanding how we think about sound, place, and participation in music. His piece American Ledger No. 1, has an evocative graphic score that confronts the history of genocide in the United States. To view the graphic score and learn more about American Ledger No. 1, visit Raven Chacon’s website. Below you’ll also find a recording of that piece.
The works by Burzyńska, Szpyrka, and Lolea were co-funded by Poland’s Ministry of Culture and National Heritage through the Composer Commissions program, administered by the National Institute of Music and Dance.
[Sources: polmic.pl, nospr.org.pl, americanart.si.edu, spiderwebinthesky.com]