Grand Canyon Music Festival: From Beethoven to Today

The Grand Canyon Music Festival has a close relationship with the Native American Composer Apprentice Project (NACAP), where Native composers and guest string players enter Southwest schools to mentor students and perform their music. Often those students have received no prior training in composition and are impressively able to produce brief original pieces in a short time; some works subsequently appear on Grand Canyon Music Festival concerts. Three programs from August and September 2024 at Shrine of the Ages are excerpted in this broadcast.

Four NACAP student pieces were selected to make up a “NACAP Suite #1” played by Grant Houston, Bengisu Gokce, Jay Julio, and Nicholas Johnson. This ensemble was new to NACAP in 2024 after many years of the dedicated efforts by the Catalyst Quartet, whose cellist Karlos Rodriguez still appeared in solo and chamber music at the festival. The suite consists of pieces by students in NACAP from 2015-21: Xavier Ben, Trenton Begay, Arika Morningstar, and Tyler Esquivel.

Additionally Chickasaw composer Jerod Impichchaachaaha’ Tate, who has taught in the NACAP program, is represented by his 2013 work Pisachi (Reveal), which takes Native American dance music as a basis for a musical tapestry illustrative of Native life in the Southwest.

The aforementioned Karlos Rodriguez is joined by violinist Steven Moeckel and pianist Silvan Negruțiu for a favorite from Beethoven’s “middle” period, the Op.70/2 trio nicknamed the “Ghost” for reasons as nebulous as ghosts themselves. It shows the total emancipation of each instrument in a departure from the piano-dominated trios of past composers.