JACK LANGDON

is a musician, filmmaker, and writer with concentrations in experimental music, minimalist documentary, cultural criticism, and political economy.

born in 1994, enrolled in sault ste. marie tribe of chippewa indians

nindaa gichi-neyaashiing

[archive and documentation of past performances can be found here]

UPCOMING EVENTS

8.7.25

Jeff Kimmel (clarinets), Jack Langdon (bibigwan),
Stephan Haluska (harp), & Adam Shead (percussion)
Comfort Station
Chicago, IL

8.8.25

Jack Langdon (bibigwan)
Marmalade
Chicago, IL

8.21.25

Premiere of “Cheap Dream” for harpsichord by Justin Wallace
Britton Recital Hall, University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, MI

10.12.25

Jack Langdon (bibigwan)
The Whistler
Chicago, IL

BIOGRAPHY, CV, CONTACT

The Cup of Grief
for pierrot ensemble with percussion

December 2024

no performance

score

The Cup of Grief is a work which takes its title from a line in Edward Benton-Benai’s telling of The Seven Fires Prophecy in The Mishnomis Book—the first place where this story appeared in print. The work is 12 minutes long and prominently features the flute as the distant image of a storyteller—wordlessly narrating. In the program note, I write:

“Here, I sit with the problem of representing the poetic, narrative, and historical inspiration for this work. This piece is not merely the fragmentary re-telling of this resonant part of the Seven Fires Prophecy, as I embrace the medium of music for a reason. The formal ground of this work derives from simple transposition of numeric values and temporal notions which are significant to the Anishinaabek, but these are only but one current which shapes the flowing of material in this work among many other currents. While I use these motifs, forms, and gestures to shape an affective architecture which is familiar to my poetics, culture, and desires, I allow myself to not simply "express" myself through the music. Indeed the piece's aim is not to stage an experience of emotional catharsis in regards to the text from which this piece grew, but to point towards something—perhaps far off in the distance or perhaps close, but unacknowledged—that I feel as worthy of staging as an experience of form, symbolism, and affect; to make an undercurrent of this text sensible in an intimate way—with all complexities and contradictions left in tact. In the attempt to transmit this fragment from Benton-Benai’s telling in a piece of concert music, I encounter the edge of what music can actually say or represent. Perhaps this is a good thing.”

This work is dedicated to Edward Benton-Benai: founding member of the American Indian Movement, spiritual leader of the Lac Courte Oreilles Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, and founder of the Red House School in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Category
Composition