Music for Indigenous Prayer Sunday

It is my great privilege in my work as a musician to collaborate with composers of new music to bring works of art to life for the first time. In giving feedback for how best to shape a concept for the instruments I play, I often find that I myself am learning a great deal through this exchange; opening my ears to new aesthetics and concepts, hearing a different perspective in a technical or musical possibility I never before considered.

This was certainly my experience with Cherokee Gothic, today’s postlude, a piece by Cherokee composer Anjelica Lindsay. Originally commissioned as a work for solo marimba by Lorena Navarro, a member of the Shoshone-Paiute tribe, as a part of a master’s thesis that focusses on new repertory for solo percussion written exclusively by First Nations composers of Turtle Island. Anjelica worked with me to arrange the piece for organ (to great effect!), and I’m so grateful for her sharing an opportunity to encounter her amazing work on my own instrument.

In Anjelica’s words:

“The title Cherokee Gothic references a comment by architect Frank Lloyd Wright, who described architecture he saw in Oklahoma as “Cherokee Gothic.” In that moment, a white architect in a position of authority named and framed something that was not defined by Cherokee people themselves. My piece engages with that dynamic by mirroring it back through music: a Cherokee woman composing her own impression of “Gothic,” not as an external label, but as an act of reclamation and self-definition.”

Abraham Ross

Solemn Mass takes place at St. James’ Anglican Church, Vancouver at 10:30 am every Sunday.