Press
Return to the list of articles
Aiming for center mass: Singing into the message with Resonance Ensemble
The choral group’s CD release concert featured music by Melissa Dunphy, Renée Favand-See, Stacey Philipps, Mari Esabel Valverde, Vin Shambry, Dominick DiOrio, and Jake Runestad.
Daryl Browne of Oregon Arts Watch
October 31, 2023
Resonance Ensemble had a retrospective/CD-launching concert a few weeks ago. LISTEN, the first CD produced by this Portland choir, is a selection of works they have sung and commissioned and championed in their past 15 years. This concert was a representation of those same past works. And their 2023-24 season-ending concert next June 4, “MISSION 15” will also reflect their successful past performances.
Had enough of the “past?” Good. You’ll not read the word again here, for Resonance is the antithesis of, um, that word. They are an arts organization who continue to explore a pathway to the future and invited other artists – visual, literary and musical – and you to join them on the journey.
In this opening concert Resonance reasserted that the classic choral arts as a genre and we as listeners can embrace a broader, more inclusive, more purposeful present. This concert, and their new CD, highlights choral music creators who know how to mold voices into the exquisite sonic vibrations we call choral music. These creators are well served in the capable voices of Resonance musicians and the conducting of Katherine FitzGibbon.
The Resonance trademark musical excellence was in evidence. Most of these works – contemporary works that challenge the listener but don’t thumb their noses at the value of accessibility – are goldurned difficult. These singers love it and always lean into the challenge which means we get a nice couple hours of choral music. [...]
[...] This concert and the new Resonance CD were named for Melissa Dunphy’s two-movement composition LISTEN, commissioned by Resonance Ensemble in 2018. The word “listen” is used so often today as a single-word preamble – as a call to pay attention. FitzGibbon listened to Christine Blasey Ford’s 2018 Senate Judiciary Committee hearing testimony (to which too few paid attention), words which were then paired with Anita Hill’s 1991 testimony to become Dunphy’s striking a cappella composition.
FitzGibbon cautioned the audience beforehand about the beyond-PG text. Dunphy’s music and text-setting don’t pull punches: it aims for center mass and emerges with courage and power. [...]
I don’t just want to “hear” these works again, I want to know them. And then I want to have other people hear them. I felt this way at age 12 when I got a vinyl of Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms and couldn’t wait to share it with my friends. A well-engineered CD is a gift to composers and audiences. This is not a plug to purch-the-merch. It’s a nod to organizations – like Resonance – who undertake recording projects that assist in the distribution of worthy works like these. [...]