Concert titles are carefully thought out. Some are specifically regional – “Music of the Balkans.” Some identify a precise period of music – “The Impressionists.” Some are just there – “Love Is in The Air.”
But according to Resonance Ensemble Artistic Director and President Katherine FitzGibbon the title of their recent concert in Portland came right from the gut. The RE team was strategizing about this collection of music embodying strength and perseverance and relevance to the world of today and as a joke – sorta maybe – FitzGibbon growled “Choir Grrrl.” Whoa…having a Riot Grrrl flashback.
The Oxford dictionary doesn’t actually define the “grrr” in “grrrl” but does state that the earliest written usage of “grrr” is attributed to – how cool – female poet and writer, Sylvia Plath, whose confessional style, autobiographical and personal, often leaned away from norms of female comportment. Gut or intuition, FitzGibbon got it right. The Resonance Ringdown event on Saturday, February 8 at the Aladdin Theater had to be called “Choir Grrrl.”
There were seven works on the first half, five after the intermission – great length – with performances by the women of Resonance, composer/performer Cecille Elliott and Ringdown duo Danni Lee Parpan and Caroline Shaw.
Caroline Shaw? Youngest-winner-of-the-Pulitzer-Prize-in-Music Caroline Shaw? Five-time-Grammy-Award-winner Caroline Shaw? Well, yeeesss…now you just take a moment to lift your jaw back into place… that Caroline Shaw. But in this concert it was Caroline Shaw, Portland-based partner in Ringdown and in life with Danni Lee Parpan; Caroline Shaw who writes such good, good music (exact wording on that Pulitzer) and smiles ear to ear when watching other people perform even when they aren’t performing her songs.
With all due respect, however, a Pulitzer is granted for outstanding achievement which Shaw’s Partita for 8 Voices certainly is. Hear the composer talk about her creative process in a 2019 OAW feature here. And let the Pulitzer-recognized Partita speak for itself here.
On the Aladdin stage was camaraderie and a hominess. Picture that cement-block, half-finished basement where all neighborhood kids go to jam amidst foam-spewing couches and cords (or chords) running every which way out of sockets above the washing machine. It was that vibe. Somebody took a turn at the front while the other performers snuggled up behind and cheered them on. And a couple of times everybody joined in.
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FitzGibbon set the tone. She greeted the crowd warmly at the beginning. And in transition between some pieces she, or the performers themselves, told a story about the music or why a piece made the program. Not too much, just enough and only when it helped the flow rather than hinder it. And we watched from our slightly lumpy but comfortably upholstered Aladdin seats (nostalgia rush) and felt like we were witness to raw creativity.
There was no centerpiece work around which the others were arranged in homage. But there was homage paid within some of the texts. To women, to the earth, to big things and little things – to life. There was a gentle, imperceptibly purposeful flow of one piece to the next.
A preview performance occurred two days prior when the Resonance women, Elliott, Shaw and Parpan appeared on KQAC’s Thursdays @ Three February 6th broadcast as part of the Roger O. Doyle Choral Series. It was a delightful broadcast and is available on archive only till February 21.
The Flow
Nature inspired the first four selections on the program. Judy A. Rose’s 2024 a cappella piece Ode to the Wind was unambiguous in its portrayal of shifting winds; program notes specified the source of Rose’s inspiration were the ice/windstorms of January 2024 that downed so many trees. An alluring four-note motif held the attention as harmonic colors swirled in the wind overhead. Ringdown’s What Are You After added synthesized bird song and some striking pizzicato embellishments to an earlier Shaw piece giving the audience a taste of the plugged-in performance Elliott was about to offer in her composition Will O’ The Wisp.
“Phosphorescent light hovering or floating at night”. Nah; not buying that Oxford definition. “A thing that is difficult or impossible to find, reach or catch.” There it is. That’s the definition of Cecille’s performance. It’s even difficult to describe.
It started on guitar, added a body beat. Then Elliott’s foot tapped a synth pedal and the guitar and body-beat looped; Elliott added a droning I-V; pedal again; guitar; pedal; clapping rhythms in four, now in three, now 3 against 4; how about adding some violin to all of the above.
It…all…worked. That whole jam-session-in-the-basement vibe? It kicked in big time on this piece. Cecille Elliott gave a strong, confident, captivating solo performance. Not a translucent little sprite this Will O’ The Wisp. She’s a “Choir Grrrl.”
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Resonance’s musical virtuosity was evident in the handful of a cappella choral showcase pieces, like Shaw’s So Quietly and When The Dust Settles by Mari Esabel Valverde in which Hannah Brewer accompanied on piano. Valverde’s homage to Miss Major Griffin-Gracy, “lifelong transgender and intersex rights activist” (composer notes), When the Dust Settles, is included on Resonance’s 2023, 15th-anniversary CD “LISTEN.”
In Shaw’s So Quietly the women tucked into the intonation as triadic bursts, neurons firing, depicted an internal dialogue in which a brilliant mind worked up the courage to speak aloud. The singing was clear, rhythms crisp. What a nice little bit of choral nanofiction.
Soprano sibs Vakarė Petroliūnaitė and Madeline Ross – a match of at least 20 vocal DNA markers y’all; it’s real science – pierced the troposphere and headed toward outer space in Renée Favand-See’s We Need Earth; Lisa Neher completed the demanding solo trio. The text is the words of Mae Jemison, the first African American Women to travel, on Space Shuttle Endeavour, as a crew member in space. Having the text displayed on screen would have been so helpful. The crucial words were not always clear. But the work soared.
Pulling off a fine performance of a work with such demanding vocal range and tightly bound intervals is a testament to the skills of these Resonance women. With twelve singers there’s nowhere to hide–everyone is a soloist.
Shaw, Kristen Buhler, Rebecca Guderian, and Kathleen Hollingsworth soloed on Cecille Elliott’s world premiere piece It’s So Quiet. Only soloists near microphones were picked up so some words were clearer than others. But Elliott’s newest work was in good hands.
Elliott’s original text fits the “Plath-ian” model. In the KQAC Thursdays @ 3 broadcast premiere of It’s So Quiet Elliott “confessed” to All Classical’s Christa Wessel that she processes her emotions when she is writing. For this piece the “middle of the night” silence was her place to find hope. A four-note rooted motif appears several times above changing choral textures. As the work draws toward closure solos drop in like cleansing rain and the singers end in close harmony on the words “finding hope in your wild hearts.” Some beautiful music and text in Elliott’s latest composition.
This concert featured three more world premieres by Ringdown in a process we can perhaps qualify (but not label, please) as “choral songing.” Ringdown was commissioned by Resonance to add voices to three previous Ringdown songs: The Mess, My Turn and Reckoning. Great idea, great result.
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Reckoning was the first song written by Ringdown. The original version calls for string and electronic background to the incredibly vulnerable words and a repeating vi-V-I progression that breaks only when the heart tells it to. Watch Ringdown construct the original song in studio here:
Now imagine voices replacing some of those background chords and textures. Resonance voices were a sympathetic landscape for an already precious song. Shaw and Parpan experienced Reckoning this way for the first time in the aforementioned KQAC T@3 broadcast and were quite pleased. Take a listen to that new version here.
Virtuosity in performance means being flexible, going with the flow in front of an audience. In this Resonance excels. Little things like singers helping cover a solo at the last minute to bigger things like clicking back into sync when a momentary musical hiccup occurs.
There were no hiccups with the Aladdin Theater. The Aladdin staff is deserving of a big thumbs up for making the audience feel welcome from their first step through the front door. Liz Bacon Brownson, Resonance Director of Marketing and Operations, in an email to OAW agreed. “It was clear they (she noted Arta, Paul, Sage, Nathan and Sean) were committed to creating a positive experience for everyone involved.” Brownson also gave kudos to their volunteer team. Participants in the creativity every one.
The Overall
The blending of synthesized sound and choral sound is a wonderment. I am not educated in electronic soundcraft. Yet in the several pieces where chords and melody were electronically arpeggiated, or looped or filtered or, for all I know, decaffeinated, I appreciated that the voice was honored and text illuminated.
This concert showcased marriage of music and word in choral singing and song. George Frideric Handel avowed, according to Portland Baroque Orchestra’s Artistic Director Julian Perkins, that the introduction of music into the dramatic Messiah text will not make the text invisible. Good advice, that.
Parpan’s texts are genuine and uncontrived. She invites us into a story and moments later heads are nodding, laughs are bubbling up or tears are flowing in affinity with the carefully crafted texts. And Shaw’s music – the phrasing and structure, harmony and melody – makes the words visible, or shines more light on them, from every angle.
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How do they do it? Last year, Ringdown talked a bit about their creative partnership with OAW’s Matthew Neil Andrews. But chicken or egg? The result is magical.
Definitions, labels, genres, categories…? It’s refreshing to lean away from those norms. The joy of just coming together, encouraging folks to step forward and uplifting them when they do; being real. And if a strong, vibrant, colorful, organic, creative “grrr” comes from the head, heart or gut…it might just be good, good music.
Connections
Coming up next for Resonance Ensemble is their collaboration with Orchestra Nova Northwest. The concerts on March 15 and 16 offer the music of Margaret Bonds (Credo), Ralph Vaughn-Williams (Dona Nobis Pacem) and Caroline Shaw (To The Hands) and welcomes the Lewis and Clark and Reed College Choirs. Read more about that concert here.
Ringdown will be performing at the 5-day Birds of Paradise Music Festival in Utrecht, Netherlands around that same time. Catch up with them here.
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