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Program and Concert Schedule
Concert Program
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Concert Schedule
SATURDAY, MARCH 15TH (TROUTDALE | REYNOLDS H.S.)
7:00pm - House Opens
7:30pm - Peformance begins
(105 minutes with one 15-minute intermission)
9:30pm - End of Performance
SUNDAY, MARCH 16TH (BEAVERTON | RESER CENTER)
2:30 pm - Doors open
3:00 pm - Show begins
(105 minutes with one 15-minute intermission)
5:00pm - End of program
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Explore the world of Resonance Nova
SIX ENSEMBLES, DECADES OF MUSICAL EXCELLENCE
RESONANCE ENSEMBLE
Katherine FitzGibbon, conductor
ORCHESTRA NOVA NORTHWEST
Steven Byess, conductor
CHORAL ARTS ENSEMBLE OF PORTLAND
David DeLyser, conductor
PORTLAND PHOENIX CHAMBER CHOIR
Justin Smith, conductor
LEWIS & CLARK CAPPELLA NOVA
Katherine FitzGibbon, conductor
REED COLLEGIUM MUSICUM
Shohei Kobayashi, conductor
FEATURED ARTISTS
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In addition to her role as Artistic Director & Founder of Resonance Ensemble, Dr. Katherine FitzGibbon is Professor of Music and Director of Choral Activities at Lewis & Clark College, where she conducts two of the three choirs and oversees the vibrant voice, choral, and opera areas. FitzGibbon is President of the National Collegiate Choral Organization, and her choirs have performed at the NCCO, ACDA, and OMEA conferences.
Read more here -
Steven Byess is a dynamic and passionate conductor, hailed by critics as “masterful and brilliant,” “creating the epitome of instrumental elegance,” and capturing “the full spirit and vitality of the score perfectly.” Recognized for his musical versatility, multi-faceted presence on the podium, and passion for music education, he is devoted to promoting a life-long love and enthusiasm for music and the arts.
Read more here -
A multi-faceted musician, Shohei Kobayashi synthesizes their experiences as a conductor, ensemble vocalist, and art song interpreter with their insights as a solo singer/songwriter and bandmate to connect and collaborate with music lovers of all backgrounds. Shohei currently leads the choral program and teaches courses in music theory and musicianship at Reed College.
Read more here -
A Portland, Oregon native, soprano Nicole Joseph received her Masters and Specialist Degree in Voice from the University of Michigan, and Bachelors in Voice from Pacific Lutheran University. Now currently based in the Detroit area as a concert soloist, Nicole has been heard with Flint Symphony, Oakland University, Detroit Chamber Winds & Strings and Southern Great Lakes Symphony. Outside of Michigan she has performed with McCall SummerFest, Siletz Bay Music Festival, Walla Walla Symphony, Portland Chamber Orchestra, Resonance Ensemble, and Victoria Bach Festival
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Baritone Wayne Arthur (He/They) is an artist with a heart-felt intelligence, dedicated to telling liberatory new stories and uncovering untold historical truths through voice, acting and movement. Over the last few seasons Wayne appeared as Baritone 1 in Anthony Davis' X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X at the Seattle Opera, Metropolitan Opera, Detroit Opera and Boston Modern Orchestra Project. Wayne appeared in the Metropolitan Opera premiere of Fire Shut up in my Bones, which received the 2023 Grammy Award for Best Opera Record.
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Claire Forstman is a pianist and vocal coach currently based in Portland, Oregon, where she is in her second year as a member of the Resident Artist studio at Portland Opera. In the ‘24-‘25 season, she will be the principal pianist for the company’s production of Falstaff, play orchestral keyboards for Paul Moravec’s The Shining, and lead the studio’s scenes program and aria showcase as Music Director.
Read more here
MUSIC AS ACTIVISM
The works we present this weekend speak directly to the struggles and hopes of our world. Shaw’s To the Hands reflects on displacement and the role we in the United States have in global refugee crises, Bonds’ Credo envisions a world of racial equality, and Vaughan Williams’ Dona nobis pacem meditates on war, loss, and peace.
These works not only highlight the challenges of our time but also call us to action, reminding us of music’s transformative power to inspire empathy, demand justice, and instill compassion.
TO THE HANDS | CAROLINE SHAW
Composer Caroline Shaw
The Crossing commissioned To the Hands as a response to Ad manus from Dieterich Buxtehude’s 17th century masterpiece, Membra Jesu Nostri. To the Hands begins inside the 17th century sound of Buxtehude. It expands and colors and breaks this language, as the piece’s core considerations, of the suffering of those around the world seeking refuge, and of our role and responsibility in these global and local crises, gradually come into focus. The prelude turns the tune of Ad manus into a wordless plainchant melody, punctured later by the strings’ introduction of an unsettling pattern.
The second movement fragments Buxtehude’s choral setting of the central question, “quid sunt plagae istae in medio manuum tuarum,” or “what are these wounds in the midst of your hands.” It settles finally on an inversion of the question, so that we reflect, “What are these wounds in the midst of our hands?” We notice what may have been done to us, but we also question what we have done and what our role has been in these wounds we see before us.
The text that follows in the third movement is a riff on Emma Lazarus’ sonnet The New Colossus, famous for its engraving at the base of the Statue of Liberty. The poem’s lines “Give me your tired, your poor,/ Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free” and its reference to the statue’s “beacon-hand” present a very different image of a hand — one that is open, beckoning, and strong. No wounds are to be found there — only comfort for those caught in a dangerous and complex environment.
While third movement operates in broad strokes from a distance, the fourth zooms in on the map so far that we see the intimate scene of an old woman in her home, maybe setting the table for dinner alone. Who is she, where has she been, whose lives has she left? This simple image melts into a meditation on the words in caverna from the Song of Solomon, found in Buxtehude’s fourth section, Ad latus.
In the fifth movement the harmony is passed around from one string instrument to another, overlapping only briefly, while numerical figures are spoken by the choir. These are global figures of internally displaced persons, by country, sourced from the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) data reported in May 2015 (accessed on 20/03/2016 at www.internal-displacement.org). Sometimes data is the cruelest and most honest poetry. The sixth and final movement unfolds the words in caverna into the tumbling and comforting promise of “ever ever” — “ever ever will I hold you, ever ever will I enfold you”. They could be the words of Christ, or of a parent or friend or lover, or even of a nation.
—from program notes by Caroline Shaw
CREDO | MARGARET BONDS
Margaret Bonds
Margaret Bond’s Credo is her setting of the ever-intrepid pan-Africanist sociologist and reformer W.E.B. Du Bois (1868-1963). The text (1904, rev. 1920) – one of the first political and social-justice manifestos committed to print by a Black American – stands with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s, “I Have a Dream” speech as one of the most influential racial-justice documents of the twentieth century. It not only condemns war as murder and oppression and imperialism as “devilish,” but also affirms, for a world in which – then as now – Black lives are viewed in some quarters as less than others, the inherent beauty and dignity of Blackness, the importance of racial equality.
Most importantly, it declares that the quest for racial justice and global equality is mandated by God himself. Margaret Bonds, a deeply religious lifelong-champion of social justice in all its forms, poured herself into setting this manifesto to music in 1964-66, creating an extended composition of extraordinary power and beauty. That composition was premiered with the composer at the piano in 1967 and received one other complete performance during Bonds’s lifetime, but remained unpublished until 2020, when Hildegard Publishing released the first edition of both the orchestral version and the piano-vocal version.
When the poet’s widow, Shirley Graham Du Bois, attended the first complete posthumous performance she labeled the event “one of the most moving moments of [her] life” and described Bonds’s Credo as “a work of art that is eternal – that will live as long as people love each other and really believe in brotherhood.”
In a 1965 letter to Shirley Graham Du Bois, Bonds looked “forward to a time when ‘Credo’ will move all over the world” – and indeed, those present will surely agree that these words and this music are, to put it simply, for now.
–adapted from program notes by John Michael Cooper
DONA NOBIS PACEM | RALPH VAUGHAN WILLIAMS
Composer Ralph Vaughan Williams
World War I decimated a generation of Vaughan Williams’s friends and countrymen. Dona Nobis Pacem was composed for the Huddersfield Choral Society in 1936, but the central movement (“Dirge for Two Veterans”) actually dates from the opening of the prior war, in 1914. The anguished cries that open the work set a scene of pure foreboding, and are a chilling reminder of past wartime suffering. The structure and style of the work was deeply influential, “anticipat[ing] by twenty-five years Britten’s method in the War Requiem of interpolating English poems into the Latin Mass, in his case Whitman.”
Walt Whitman shared with Vaughan Williams not only a firsthand view of the “seething hell” of war but the view that art should be a public act. His monumental Civil War cycles attempted to transfigure an entire nation’s response to a conflict where victory could only be achieved through fratricide. In Specimen Days (1892), Whitman gives this fascinating account of the war’s opening: “News of the attack on Fort Sumter and the flag at Charleston harbor, S. C., was received in New York City late at night (13th April, 1861) and was immediately sent out in extras of the newspapers. I had been to the opera in Fourteenth Street that night, and after the performance was walking down Broadway toward twelve o’clock, on my way to Brooklyn, when I heard in the distance the loud cries of the newsboys, who came presently tearing and yelling up the street, rushing from side to side even more furiously than usual. I bought an extra and cross’d to the Metropolitan Hotel (Niblo’s Garden) [at Broadway and Prince Street] where the great lamps were still brightly blazing, and, with a crowd of others, who gathered impromptu, read the news, which was evidently authentic.” During a moonlit stroll, right after he rounded the bend in Broadway in front of Grace Church, the poet’s life was changed forever.
Vaughan Williams “claimed he was the only man ever to set to music words spoken in the House of Commons.” For his maiden speech, he chose lines from the Quaker MP John Bright, one of the foremost progressives in nineteenth-century Britain. He opposed British aid to the slave-owning Confederacy during the U.S. Civil War, argued for reform of the Poor Laws and Britain’s rotten electoral system, advocated for Indian independence after the 1857 Sepoy uprising, and throughout his career denounced war —especially optional war—as the creature of a “tax-eating class” of politicians. Bright spoke these words on the floor of the House on February 23, 1855 in rejoinder to Britain’s entry into the Crimean War. On hearing them, the silvertongued orator Benjamin Disraeli wrote, “I would give all that I ever had to have delivered that speech.”
Adapting biblical poetry as only he could, Vaughan Williams closes the work with images of reunification, renewal and hope—the calm after the storm. The composer follows the baritone soloist’s beneficent words with a groundswell of four themes, rising up first from the basses and cellos, then violas, second violins, first violins. The choir takes up each theme in turn, starting with the basses (“Nation shall not lift up a sword against nation”), then the tenors (“And none shall make them afraid”), altos (“Mercy and truth are met together”) and finally sopranos (“Truth shall spring out of the earth”), as the listener is literally lifted up out of the depths of war and despair. The gathered voices erupt in acclamation as the orchestra dons its most celebratory colors; festive instruments held in reserve until this moment—chimes, tambourine, triangle, glockenspiel—join in the fun. The music drives to an inspiring climax on the words “good-will toward men.” The opening supplication for peace is granted in a prayerful valediction from the soprano soloist and a cappella chorus. In Vaughan Williams’s hands, the language of music is made every bit as eloquent as the poetic texts that inspired him.
-adapted from program notes by The Choral Society of Grace Church in New York
ABOUT THE MISSION
This weekend we are joined by Immigration Counseling Service (ICS).
Established in 1978, Immigration Counseling Service (ICS) is Oregon’s oldest independent nonprofit immigration law firm, with offices in Hood River and Portland, as well as monthly legal clinics in Central Oregon and the Willamette Valley.
Their mission is to achieve equity and justice for immigrants and their families by providing accessible services to uphold their legal rights. What began as a grassroots effort was championed and nurtured by long-time immigrant advocate, Margaret Godfrey. Over the years, ICS has provided legal assistance to many thousands of individuals from more than 100 countries around the world. ICS carries on Margaret’s legacy, remaining dedicated to ensuring that anyone with an immigration matter has a place to come for help.
Tonight we honor and respect the contributions made by immigrants to keep our communities strong and vibrant. ICS’s tireless work in protecting the rights and safety of immigrants is more important than ever. A portion of proceeds from this program will be donated to ICS in support of their work in our region.
We encourage you to learn more about ICS and support their work as you are able.
TAKE ACTION!
Go beyond the music by checking out these resources on how you can
make a difference in your own community.
READ
Words About War | a language guide for discussing war & foreign policy
this guide helps to identify language that obfuscates the human cost of war, and offers suggestions for how to better understand & discuss conflicts
From Spirituals to Symphonies: African-American Women Composers and Their Music | Helen Walker-Hill
While the full book is excellent, the chapter linked here specifically focuses on Margaret Bonds. You can read about “Credo” on page 170 (pg 32 in PDF)
LISTEN & WATCH
Arresting Power | Documentary Film
this film chronicles conflicts between local police and community members throughout the past fifty years, and offers suggestions for moving forward
Unaccompanied: Alone in America | Film by Linda Freedman
Each year thousands of children fleeing poverty, war, gangs, or abusive family relationships enter the United States unaccompanied by an adult or separated from their parents or legal guardians. Their journeys are hazardous, and their youth makes them especially vulnerable to becoming victims of human trafficking, exploitation, and abuse. These children are detained in facilities across the country, including in Oregon. Without legal support from providers like Immigration Counseling Service, they face deportation alone.
The Wounded World: W.E.B. DuBois, African Americans, and the History of WWI | Lecture by Chad L. Williams
“DuBois understood that the history of the war was deeply bound with the political status of Black people, the future of democracy, and the condition of the world we live in…so as we ask ourselves 100 years later: what was the significance of the war? what did it all mean? why is it worth remembering? DuBois and the Black experience reminds us that these questions are not just academic. They are critical, in 2017, to confronting our current sick democracy — and necessary to try to heal our still-wounded world.”
For Conductors & Music Educators: Margaret Bonds’ Credo and the Expanding Choral Canon | Lecture-Performance by Justin Smith (PPCC conductor), Kendra Kay Friar (accompanist), and Cristino Perez (Baritone soloist)
a step-by-step approach to expanding understanding of the choral canon, including considerations score study, personnel decisions, rehearsal techniques, and reflective practices used to bring this work to life
ACT
Showing Up for Racial Justice | a guide for those just starting their activism journey as it relates to racial justice
26 Ways to Be In the Struggle Beyond the Streets | a guide for how to support racial justice beyond street-based protesting
SUPPORT
Here are some local organizations & groups that could use your support:
IMMIGRATION COUNSELING SERVICE | Our mission is to achieve equity and justice for immigrants and their families by providing accessible services to uphold their legal rights.
IMMIGRANT & REFUGEE COMMUNITY ORGANIZATION (ICRO) | Our mission is to welcome, serve, and empower refugees, immigrants, and people across cultures and generations to reach their full potential. We imagine a future where refugees and immigrants belong, our staff are nurtured, and all communities thrive.
OREGON REMEMBRANCE PROJECT | An organization founded to help Oregonians reconcile the state’s history of racial injustice in their own communities.
PACIFIC REFUGEE SUPPORT GROUP | Our mission is to re-empower refugees through social support and education. We help our clients navigate a path to a successful life in the US.
VANPORT MOSAIC | The Vanport Mosaic is a memory-activism platform. We amplify, honor, present, and preserve the silenced histories that surround us in order to understand our present—and create a future where we all belong.
SOUL RESTORATION CENTER | This is a Black-focused gathering space in NE Portland, OR, where Black folks of all ages are seen, celebrated and honored. We offer cultural activities and programming that inspires community building, healing, and Black JOY!
SELF-ENHANCEMENT INC. (SEI) | SEI is a comprehensive, one-stop resource for youth and families, primarily African Americans and others living in poverty or seeking culturally responsive services. It is also one of the city’s leading multi-service organizations, providing thousands of youth, families, and adults with a wide array of educational and social services on an annual basis. SEI’s strength is in its ability to meet the complex needs of the children and families it serves, including helping people to overcome cultural, educational and economic barriers.
UP NEXT
RESONANCE ENSEMBLE
WE ARE STILL HERE
Sunday, June 1 | 3pm
@Portland Expo Center
this event is the conclusion of the 10th Annual Vanport Mosaic Festival
Resonance Ensemble joins Vanport Mosaic, artist Chisao Hata, and survivors of Japanese-American incarceration and their descendants, to acknowledge the little-known history of the Portland Expo Center and honor the survival and persistence of Japanese Americans in our region.
Concluding the 10th Vanport Mosaic Festival, this event will activate the former WWII-era assembly center with historical photographs and video projections, a communal altarpiece, and musical and theatrical offerings — including new site-specific works conceived by Hata.
ORCHESTRA NOVA NORTHWEST
TESTIMONY: PROKOFIEV, SHOSTAKOVICH, AND STALIN
Saturday, May 17th | 7:30pm
@Mt. Hood Community College (Gresham)
Sunday, May 18th | 3pm
@Patricia Reser Center for the Arts (Beaverton)
Orchestra Nova Northwest welcomes international competition winner and President of the Cleveland International Piano Competition Yaron Kohlberg as he performs one of the most challenging and exciting piano concertos in the repertoire: the dazzling Piano Concerto No. 3 of Sergei Prokofiev.
The orchestra will also perform Shostakovich’s mighty, tragic, but ultimately triumphal Symphony No. 10—a musical rebuke of the oppressive regime of Joseph Stalin, written immediately after the death of the Soviet dictator.