Resonance Commissions | We Hold Your Names Sacred
Music video for We Hold Your Names Sacred. Produced by Oh! Creative
Commission information
Composer: Mari Esabel Valverde
Text: Dane Figueroa Edidi
Conductor: Dr. Katherine FitzGibbon
Duration: ca. 4’00”
Instrumentation: SATB + piano
Performances:
MISSION 15 (June 8th, 2024)
Commissions for Now (July 3rd, 2021) - world premiere
Commission story
In the Spring of 2021, as things continued to be challenging for the arts, Resonance Ensemble introduced “Commissions for Now,” a video series that premiered commissioned works from three nationally recognized poets/composers and performed by Resonance artists and collaborators.
The series was produced by Oh! Creative and captured by Portland filmmaker Kenny Hamlett. Our commitment to present work that highlights underrepresented voices and reflects pressing social issues remains unwavering. The Commission for Now project is just one example of that commitment—we are thrilled to present these dynamic composers who have created this incredible music.
Poet/activist Dane Figueroa Edidi
About We Hold Your Names Sacred
On the set of the We Hold Your Names Sacred music video at Alberta House.
We Hold Your Names Sacred was co-commissioned by Resonance Ensemble along with 27 other choruses across North America as part of the 2021 GALA Choruses’ Trans Commissioning Consortium.
Created by composer Mari Esabel Valverde and writer/activist Dane Figueroa Edidi, this powerful work was created to honor transwomen of color whose lives were unjustly and violently taken.
Edidi describes the piece as calling an assembly to “lift up their names and make them sacred, to acknowledge the divinity of Black and Brown trans women. We say their names to get the heavens to move for us.”
The premiere also included a live panel discussion with Valverde, Edidi, and local leaders within the LGBTQIA+ community—and was presented in partnership with Pride Northwest as part of the official 2021 Portland Pride event. The work is now also being memorialized in a studio recording by Resonance Ensemble in 2024.
“We must do the work necessary to keep our sisters’ memories alive to hold ourselves accountable, for the ultimate death is the death of their names being forgotten. For too many of our transgender sisters, brothers, and siblings, their humanity was forgotten long before their lives were stolen by cowards. We need to readily protect trans women of color because they are susceptible to a system working too well at impeding their flourishing.”
Names we hold sacred
Jaquarrius Holland
Chyna Gibson
Ty Underwood
Penny Proud
Crystal Edmonds
Islan Nettles
Angel Rose
Lexi
Layla Pelaez Sánchez
Muhlaysia Booker
Brianna “BB” Hill
Layleen Polanco
Composer Mari Esabel Valverde