Commission Story: We Hold Your Names Sacred
Radical collaboration is core to who we are at Resonance Ensemble. This year marks 15 seasons, made possible in part by the deep partnerships we’ve cultivated with living artists across a variety of disciplines. Leading up to our season finale concert (MISSION 15), we go beyond the music to share the stories that brought this work to the concert stage.
Today, we dive deeper into We Hold Your Names Sacred,
by composer Mari Esabel Valverde and writer-activist Lady Dane Figueroa Edidi.
Composer Mari Esabel Valverde
Writer/Activist Lady Dane Figueroa Edidi
Where were you in 2021?
Earlier this week we shared a bit about Resonance Ensemble’s “Commissions for Now” series, which premiered commissioned works from three nationally recognized poets/composers. Today’s featured work, We Hold Your Names Sacred, was another piece premiered as part of the series—co-commissioned alongside 27 other North American choirs as part of the GALA Choruses’ Trans Commissioning Consoritum.
Filmed on location at the Historic Alberta House by Oh! Creative Productions
Created by composer Mari Esabel Valverde and writer/activist Dane Figueroa Edidi, this powerful work was created to honor trans women 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, virtual panel discussion with Valverde, Edidi, and local leaders within the LGBTQIA+ community—presented in partnership with Pride Northwest as part of the official 2021 Portland Pride event.
TEXT | Lady Dane Figueroa Edidi
Sisters whose lives were taken
Memories of you
we sing
Note, chord, melody, harmony
psalm
Prayers
we offer with tears
Love
with words we give
High
we lift your spirit up
So you may know forever joy
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
May your smile be made eternal
May justice be brought
with this refrain
Sisters we hold sacred your names
From the official music video for We Hold Your Names Sacred
From the official music video for We Hold Your Names Sacred. These images bear the faces of the trans women honored in the text.
From the official music video for We Hold Your Names Sacred. The umbrellas bear the names of the trans women honored in the text.
WHAT STILL RESONATES
It should come as no surprise to hear that this work remains just as relevant today as it did in 2021.
UCLA’s Williams Institute released a 2024 report showing that 38% of trans youth currently live in states that have enacted bans on care. Since the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) began tracking data of trans and gender non-conforming people killed in the United Sates in 2013, people of color have made up the largest share fatal violence victims. In 2023, 69% of all victims were Black, and 51% were Black trans women, according to their report. The data also showed that most victims were under the age of 35—the average age being just 28.
HRC has identified at least 335 transgender and gender-nonconforming people killed in the past decade. The past four years have been especially fatal for the community, with 171 recorded deaths.
The upcoming performance at MISSION 15 marks the first time Resonance will have the opportunity to perform the work live. With the surge in anti-trans legislation, anti-trans violence, and hate-motivated fatalities in the United States and beyond, We Hold Your Names Sacred is more important to share than ever before.
Mari Esabel Valverde, composer
“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”
HEAR IT LIVE AT MISSION 15
Saturday, June 8th | 7:30pm @Winningstad Theatre
Hear this work—along with an evening of other pieces from across our 15 year history—in-person at the Winningstad Theatre on June 8th. This one-night only event is packed with meaningful music, powerful stories, and exciting in-person appearances by the artists we love.
The music of tomorrow is being written by the voices of today.
Dinah Dodds
Find out more about how you can help us support living artists in our community & beyond
The Dinah Dodds Fund for the Creation of New Art memorializes Dinah Dodds, President of the Board of Directors of Resonance Ensemble, who served on the board from 2014 until her death in 2019. Under Dinah’s devoted leadership, the organization developed its social justice focus and commissioned multiple major new choral works.
In tribute to Dinah, contributions to this fund shall support the creation of new art (music, visual art, and poetry), as prioritized by the artistic leadership of Resonance Ensemble. “Creation of New Art” can include commissioning and co-commissioning, premiering, and/or professionally recording (audio/video) works by living artists.