Sweet Honey in the Rock | Welcome!
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Program and Concert Schedule
Concert Program
Click here to view the program order, read bios of the featured artists, and learn what's coming up next for Resonance Ensemble.
Concert Schedule
FRIDAY, APRIL 5TH (BEAVERTON | RESER CENTER)
7:00pm - House Opens
7:30pm - Peformance begins
The program is two hours, including a 15-minute intermission
9:30pm - End of Performance
SATURDAY, APRIL 6TH (PORTLAND | THE ARMORY)
7:00pm - House Opens
7:30pm - Peformance begins
The program is two hours, including a 15-minute intermission
9:30pm - End of Performance
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American Sign Language Interpretation | Every performance Sweet Honey In The Rock® gives has a core member of the group interweaving dynamic American Sign Language interpretation with the music to create a seamless ballet of movement and voice. These two evening performances will provide an artistic bridge between the Deaf and hearing worlds.
About | the Music & the Mission
ABOUT THE MUSIC | TWO ENSEMBLES, DECADES OF EXCELLENCE
SWEET HONEY IN THE ROCK® | Photo by Christopher Robinson
RESONANCE ENSEMBLE | Photo by Rachel Hadiashar
CELEBRATing 50 years | SWEET HONEY IN THE ROCK®
Sweet Honey In The Rock® remains among the most vibrant, versatile and ever relevant musical collectives in music today; both as a performance ensemble and as an ambassadorial African American organization founded on the triumvirate missions of empowerment, education and entertainment.
Currently consisting of members Carol Maillard, Louise Robinson (both original co-founders of the group!), Nitanju Bolade Casel, Aisha Kahlil, and featured musician Romeir Mendez on upright acoustic bass and electric bass, as well as Barbara Hunt providing interpretation. Tonight’s performance also features Rochelle Rice joining the ensemble as a vocalist, and Herman Burney on bass. Sweet Honey In The Rock is a powerful and unique concert entity that fuses the elastic 360-degree possibilities of the human voice with a theatrical flair that keeps avid audiences returning for more year after year.
Kinetic, cultured and connected, this internationally renowned Grammy Award® nominated female a cappella vocal quartet has a history of over four decades of distinguished service. They have created positive, loving, and socially conscious message music that matters as it pertains to spiritual fortification, and consistently taken an activist stance toward making this planet a better place for all in which to live. Thus, the theme of the group’s 24th recording, #LoveInEvolution, Sweet Honey In The Rock’s first studio album in nine years and most contemporary project to date.
“We are very forward thinking as an organization, constantly reevaluating how we can express concepts to uplift and create change through our music and concerts. #LoveInEvolution has a more contemporary sound and feel because as people in the group grow and change, we want to hear different things, feel different things, and bring fresh elements to our presentation.”
Sweet Honey In The Rock, which has been the subject of two PBS television specials, (including American Masters), is a beloved performance ensemble that, over its 50-year history, has maintained a resilient spirit and found a way to successfully fuse the talents of the 24 women that have graced the Sweet Honey In The Rock stage into their patented sound without ever skipping a beat.
Ever evolving, the soul survivors once even expanded to six vocalists before settling back to four, all in the name of retaining its adventurous spirit, keeping up with the times and reaching greater numbers of like-minded spirits.
LISTEN | SWEET HONEY ON YOUTUBE!
Celebrating 15 years | RESONANCE ENSEMBLE
In its fifteenth season, Resonance Ensemble, a professional vocal ensemble based in Portland, Oregon, creates powerful programs that promote meaningful social change.
From the premiere of Damien Geter’s An African American Requiem with the Oregon Symphony. Pictured (right to left) soloists Kenneth Overton, Bernard Holcombe, Brandi Inez Sutton, and conductor Bill Eddins.
Programming with Purpose | Resonance’s award-winning programming takes a radically collaborative approach, developing concerts in conversation with community partners. Resonance commissions and champions new works by composers and poets whose stories have been underrepresented on the concert stage.
Resonance Ensemble works to amplify voices that have long been silenced, and they do so through moving, thematic concerts that highlight solo and choral voices, new music by composers and poets whose stories have been underrepresented on the concert stage, visual and other performing artists, and radical collaborations with community partners.
Exceptional Artistry | Under Artistic Director Katherine FitzGibbon, Resonance Ensemble has performed challenging and diverse music, always with an eye toward unique collaborations with artistic partners from around the country.
The Resonance Ensemble singers are “one of the Northwest’s finest choirs” (Willamette Week), with gorgeous vocal tone, and they also make music with heart. Resonance has commissioned new works from composers Jasmine Barnes, Kenji Bunch, Melissa Dunphy, Renée Favand-See, Damien Geter, Joe Kye, Kimberly Osberg, Judy A. Rose, Vin Shambry, Mari Esabel Valverde, Freddy Vilches and poets S. Renee Mitchell and A. Mimi Sei. Each concert connects the musical experience with tangible ways the audience can take action in collaboration with our community partner organizations.
Tangible Connection | The groundbreaking work that Resonance Ensemble has been producing over the last few years has been noted by local media and national arts organizations. In Oregon Arts Watch, Matthew Andrews described Resonance as “Part social commentary, part group therapy, and part best damn choir show in town" (June 2019).
Chorus America honored Artistic Director Katherine FitzGibbon in the summer of 2019 with the Louis Botto Award for Innovative Action and Entrepreneurial Zeal for her work rededicating Resonance to promoting meaningful social change, and for the meaningful community partnerships she creates.
Get to know us! Here is a short video sharing more about who we are.
LISTEN | RESONANCE ON YOUTUBE!
ABOUT THE MUSIC | THE MUSIC OF TOMORROW, THE VOICES OF TODAY
Resonance Ensemble is proud to present three works from our repertoire, highlighting just a few of the fantastic composers and writers we’ve had the fortune to work with over our 15 year history. Learn more about these pieces below, or peruse the entire Commission Stories gallery by clicking here.
AGNUS DEI | DAMIEN GETER
An excerpt from An African American Requiem, Geter’s unique setting of Agnus Dei has regularly appeared in our programming since it first appeared on our Hidden Voices program in 2018. Commissioned by Resonance Ensemble in 2017, An African American Requiem is a pivotal work which memorializes the lives of Black Americans lost to racial violence in the united States—the first requiem of its kind. Geter approached Resonance Ensemble Artistic Director Dr. Katherine FitzGibbon about his idea for the work following the results of the 2016 election. Working closely with FitzGibbon, Geter composed a fully-realized requiem—including SATB soloists, a large choir, narration, and full orchestra. The commissioned work, premiered in Oregon, has gone on to a successful run of performances at the Kennedy Center (east coast premiere), and with the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra (conducted by Geter himself)—even being named “Best in Classical” by the Washington Post in 2022.
Composer Damien Geter
WE ARE MURMURS | CECILLE ELLIOT
Composer Cecille Elliott
We Are Murmurs was commissioned for Resonance Ensemble’s Dirty, Stupid Music cabaret. Started in 2014, the Dirty, Stupid Music series has become a Resonance Ensemble staple—an evening highlighting the solo talents of a few select Resonance Ensemble musicians in the style of a cabaret. The 2023 volume of DSM featured this new work for solo voice ensemble by Cecille Elliott—a fantastic composer and lyricist in addition to her life as a vocalist, educator, and multi-instrumentalist. Of the piece, Cecille writes “We Are Murmurs is about experiencing very sudden grief. It explores the notion of not being ready for change, and change coming anyway. To understand a certain type of grief—and the disbelief that can accompany it.”
NORMAL NEVER WAS | JASMINE BARNES
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.
Normal Never Was features the poetry of noted author and social activist Sonya Renee Taylor and the commissioned music of now Emmy-award winning composer, Jasmine Barnes. Taken from the poem that reached thousands of readers in the early pandemic, Resonance adopted “Normal Never Was” as the theme for the 2020-21 season, with the permission of Sonya Renee Taylor.
Composer Jasmine Barnes
ABOUT THE MISSION | DONORS FOR BLACK EXCELLENCE IN THE ARTS
Tonight’s performance is supported by the Donors for Black Excellence in the Arts initiative. Developed and led by Resonance Board Member, writer/activist A. Mimi Sei, the program seeks to honor Black creatives in a wide array of disciplines—every day of the year. Learn more about how you can support incredible Black Artists at the link below!
UP NEXT FROM RESONANCE ENSEMBLE
MISSION 15 | A 15TH ANNIVERSARY CONCERT
Saturday, June 8th @The Winningstad Theater
One-night only special event!
Join us for this special fifteenth anniversary finale concert. We celebrate this special birthday with a performance of 15 audience-favorite Resonance commissions—including works from fan favorites like Cecille Elliott, Damien Geter, Joe Kye, Kenji Bunch, and more. This showcase speaks (sings) for itself, highlighting the mission-based art we have championed and the brilliant composers who created it.
In case you missed it…
Resonance Ensemble has been busy the last few years! Check out a few of our projects, videos, and more below:
