Resonance Ensemble presents their season opener, “HOME,” a concert of contemporary works focused on displacement.
Resonance partners with Operation Nightwatch and Tonality conductor Dr. Alexander Lloyd Blake to present “HOME.”
PORTLAND, OREGON — On Saturday October 2, 2021 at 7:30 pm, Resonance Ensemble presents a concert of works curated by guest conductor, Alexander Lloyd Blake—the highly-regarded conductor of the Los Angeles vocal ensemble Tonality. Tonality’s mission parallels Resonance’s, seeking to “deliver authentic stories through voice and body to incite change, understanding, and dialogue.” This exciting event is taking place at the beautiful Cerimon House for a limited audience, and streamed live for listeners everywhere.
Resonance Ensemble, under the direction of Founder and Artistic Director Katherine FitzGibbon, presents HOME as part of its new 2021-2022 season: RECLAIM—featuring visionary guest artists, inspired new commissions by celebrated composers, and a safe return to in-person performances.
Dr. Blake will lead Resonance in contemporary works by Reena Esmail, Ted Hearne, Melissa Dunphy, Saunder Choi, Cristian Larios, Nathan Heldman, Ysaye Barnwell, and others.
“I have chosen a program exploring displacement, sharing the stories of poets and composers writing about houselessness, refugee experiences, and immigration.” says Dr. Blake, “I hope everyone will join us to be a part of this conversation that explores how we can create a new radical hospitality and help those who are the most vulnerable in our communities feel uplifted and validated.”
Alexander Lloyd Blake
Vin Shambry, a local writer, actor, and storyteller ls also featured on the program. “My impact Is to inspire audience members to connect with the “human-ness” of one another.” says Shambry. “Perhaps the next time they encounter a homeless youth, a survivor of domestic violence, or a black teenage boy, they’ll remember my story and see them with curiosity as a whole, a complex person much like themselves.”
“Perhaps the next time they encounter a homeless youth, a survivor of domestic violence, or a black teenage boy, they’ll remember my story and see them with curiosity as a whole, a complex person much like themselves.”
Resonance is also proud to partner with Operation Nightwatch, a Portland nonprofit organization which provides nighttime hospitality for Portland’s unhoused population—committed to promoting dignity, community and social connection. Founded in 1981, Operation Nightwatch provides not only a safe place where those on the streets can find food, socks, clothing, blankets, and medical care, but also caring staff and volunteers who will listen to their stories and welcome them as friends.
Libby Allen, the Program Manager at Operation Nightwatch’s downtown hospitality center
“We were both inspired and delighted when Resonance reached out to us to partner with Operation Nightwatch on this project,” said Libby Allen, the Program Manager at Operation Nightwatch’s downtown hospitality center. “Our missions overlap beautifully, both centering a creative approach to social change. Resonance through arts and music, and Operation Nightwatch through radical hospitality. We look forward to contributing ideas and tangible ways folks can join us in providing our unhoused neighbors with dignity, community, and connection.”
“HOME explores the idea of reclaiming space in the world and maintaining one’s sense of home even after being displaced or houseless,” Resonance Artistic Director Katherine FitzGibbon says. “It’s no secret that Portland’s housing crisis has been worsened by the pandemic, and refugees from around the world are fleeing their ancestral homelands in search of safety and basic rights. Resonance hopes to shine light on these stories with the help of our incredible guest conductor, Dr. Alexander Lloyd Blake, who is an artist of vision and purpose, and our new community partners at Operation Nightwatch.”
A panel discussion will follow with Dr. Blake, artists, and community partners speaking on the music, their experiences, and opportunities for the audience to take action in their communities. In addition to tickets for a limited audience at Cerimon House, Resonance is also proud to present a livestream of the concert for donations only, thanks to Resonance’s new REAP Initiative.
Subscriptions are on sale now. Single tickets available starting September 28, 2021.
Introducing the REAP Initiative: Resonance Ensemble Access Project
The world looks a lot different now, but artists are still finding a way to safely create, foster community, and share powerful stories. Last year showed us at Resonance Ensemble the incredible global demand for free, online access to our programming - which is why we are proud to present the Resonance Ensemble Access Project (REAP), our initiative to ensure that all of our concerts are available to the world both in-person and online.
We can’t do it without you.
Providing this vital accessibility also increases the expenses of producing our concerts, so we are asking viewers like you to make a donation in lieu of a ticket purchase, at whatever level you're able, and for our supporters to consider an additional donation to underwrite this access for those who cannot afford to donate.
The REAP Initiative. Providing free, online access to the music of Resonance Ensemble.
Note to Journalists: Artistic Director Katherine FitzGibbon, Artistic Advisor Damien Geter, guest conductor Alexander Lloyd Blake, and Libby Allen, Program Manager for Project Nightwatch are available for print, online, and broadcast interviews. If you would like more information or would like to schedule an interview, please contact Liz Bacon Brownson at liz@resonancechoral.org or by calling (503) 427-8701.
FOR CALENDAR SUBMISSIONS
EVENT TITLE: Resonance Ensemble Presents: HOME - a reclamation of space
DATE: October 2nd, 2021
TIME: 7:30pm
LOCATION: Cerimon House / Livestream
PRICING: Single tickets to the first two concerts at Cerimon House will be made available after September 28, if space remains. Single ticket prices for those two performances will be priced at $35/adult, $30/senior, $10/student, and $5/Arts for All members. Access via video livestream is free thanks to generation donations to the Resonance Ensemble Access Project (REAP). Further information can be found online at resonancechoral.org, including information on Season Subscription options and pricing which range from $60 -$300.
FOR MORE INFO:
Liz Bacon Brownson | Email: liz@resonancechoral.org | Phone: (503) 427-8701
YOUTUBE LINK: youtube.com/c/ResonanceEnsemble
About Resonance Ensemble
In its thirteenth season, Resonance Ensemble, a professional vocal ensemble based in Portland, Oregon, creates thoughtful programs that promote meaningful social change. 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 and underrepresented composers, visual and other performing artists, and community partners.
Under Artistic Director Katherine FitzGibbon, Resonance Ensemble has performed challenging and diverse music, always with an eye toward unusual collaborations with artistic partners from around the country: poets, jazz musicians, singer-songwriters, painters, dancers. 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.
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. For the tribute to Dr. FitzGibbon, please visit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oaJMVozrcPo.
About Alexander Lloyd Blake
Dr. Alexander Lloyd Blake works as an award-winning conductor, composer/arranger, vocal contractor, singer, and music activist. Named Musical America’s 30 Professionals of the Year in 2019 and the Louis Botto Award for Innovative actions and Entrepreneurial Zeal from Chorus America, Blake was recently featured in both the NY Times and LA Times for work in diversity and anti-racism within classical music.
Blake is the Founding Artistic Director of Tonality, an award-winning choral ensemble focused on spreading a message of unity, peace, and social justice through a culturally diverse choral setting. He also serves as the Choir Director at Los Angeles County High School for the Arts (LACHSA). He also serves in Los Angeles and New York City as a Principal Associate Conductor of the National Children’s Chorus. As an arranger, Blake’s “Wade in the Water” was a featured arrangement at the North Carolina Music Educators Association convention in 2013 and is published with Santa Barbara Music Publishing. His arrangements of “Deep River” and “Poor Wayfaring Stranger” are published by Alliance Music Publishing and Walton Music Publishing, respectively. Other musical activities include an opera conducting premiere at the 2019 Prototype Festival in New York City and preparing choirs for live performances with UCLA Center for the Art of Performance.
Recent film and TV credits include singing on the soundtrack of Jordan Peele’s “Us”, Disney’s “Lion King”, and Pixar’s “Spies in Disguise.” Blake also worked as the choral contractor and vocal arranger for Andy Grammer’s performance at the 2019 ARDYs (Radio Disney Awards). Blake recently prepared singers for the 2020 Grammy Awards and performed at the 92nd Academy Awards.
Blake completed the Doctorate in Musical Arts degree at the University of Southern California in 2019. He completed the Master of Music degree at the University of California Los Angeles in 2014 and the Bachelor of Arts degree (cum laude) in Vocal Performance at Wake Forest University in 2010.
About Operation Nightwatch
Operation Nightwatch provides nighttime hospitality for Portland’s unhoused population to promote dignity, community, and social connection. Under the leadership of its first director, Gary Vaughan, Operation Nightwatch began as a street ministry, its volunteers approaching houseless people in the doorways, loading docks, and campsites where they were bedded down for the evening. In time, a Hospitality Center was established, to which houseless and other low-income people could gather with others for the evening, socializing, sharing stories, and playing games over coffee and sandwiches. The downtown Hospitality Center has since become the hub of Nightwatch's activities, from its foot care clinics to its monthly Birthday Nights and Comedy Movie Nights. It also is a place where people can be supplied with blankets, clothing, and personal hygiene items at a time of day when no other helping agency is open.
About Cerimon House
Cerimon House is a community-based public benefit nonprofit corporation, focused on the cultural arts, as well as a convening space for the kinds of community events, conversations and experiences that bring about a better world. Cerimon programs year-round: a variety of civic events, performances, workshops, and conferences, and make our building available for rentals, public gatherings, and a variety of life celebrations and ceremonies.
The idea for Cerimon House (“…a sanctuary for the Humanities…a place to be restored…”) began in 2009 when founder Randall Stuart assembled a group of his colleagues and proposed the idea of acquiring a building in Portland, specifically to renovate it into a space where humanities-related ceremonies and programming could take place.
Cerimon is pronounced “serra-mon”, and is relatable to the word “ceremony”.
Randall Stuart named the organization after a beloved character (named Cerimon) in an ancient Phoenician tale, a story also re-purposed by Shakespeare in his late-career play Pericles.
In his final years Shakespeare wrote tales of yearning including the nautical epic romance Pericles. Early in that story, young Thaisa of Cyrene (northern Africa) embarks on a sea journey with her love Pericles of Tyre (Lebanon), where they encounter a ferocious storm. Thaisa is nearing childbirth, and goes into early labor, and then perishes after delivering their baby. The child is named Marina, and her mother’s body is ceremoniously prepared and tossed overboard.
Thaisa is then met with a remarkable fortune when her body is discovered on the shores of Ephesus (the coast of Western Turkey), and brought into the welcoming house of a healer named Cerimon, where she is miraculously revived. In the fourteen years that follow, Pericles is adrift, and the bereft Thaisa seeks comfort as a novitiate at the Temple of Artemis in Ephesus. And then another miracle ensues: a chance reunion at that temple with both her sea-tossed partner and long-lost daughter. Hope is restored for this family, the gods are lauded, and bounteous praise is offered to the humble sage Cerimon.
Cerimon is a great neighbor, friend and citizen, and from our center in Portland, we welcome friends into our vision from everywhere.
For more information:
Website: /resonancechoral.org
Youtube: /c/ResonanceEnsemble
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