Resonance Ensemble hosted the Blacknificent 7 at Portland’s Alberta Rose Theatre on Sunday, November 17. One member of the talented and trending collective of Black composers, Dave Ragland, attended in person. The remaining six members (Jasmine Barnes, Carlos Simon, Joel Thompson, Shawn E. Okpebholo, Damien Geter and Jessie Montgomery) sent excellent representatives: their music.

The Fall by Jasmine Barnes, composer of the wonderful Normal Never Was commissioned by Resonance in 2021, was a great opener. A fresh sound, reminiscent of early ‘50s close SATB harmony, but with a bit of ‘60s vocal jazziness. A few scripted vocal riffs were well sung by Maddy Ross, Shohei Kobayashi and Cecille Elliott. It was a nice welcome and a good way to settle in before the Sometimes I Cry, also by Barnes.

Associate Conductor Shohei Kobayashi took the podium, with Artistic Director Katherine FitzGibbon joining the ensemble, on Sometimes I Cry, a dense noir ballad that swells with the text from Tupac Shakur’s poem “I Cry.” The melodic line begins on a unison and blossoms into sorrow until dissolving into downward weeping steps. Word and mood painting on “painful” leads to a wrenching build on “cry”, before plummeting to the concluding “and no one cares.” 

Only two pieces in and we are reminded of the power of the choral art and the ways in which it tells the stories of our lives. And a well curated concert, with repertoire chosen to take the listener on a journey, is such a pleasure. Resonance granted Damien Geter, B7 member and a composer Portlanders know well, the privilege of deciding which of the many wonderful pieces in the Blacknificent 7’s collective catalog would be on display. What he designed was a model in the craft of curation.

Geter knew what to give us after the sad and introspective Sometimes I Cry. Affirmations by Carlos Simon, commissioned by the LA Master Chorale and premiered last January at Walt Disney Hall, is also introspective but uplifting. Later this season Resonance Ensemble, with Nova Northwest orchestra, will bring us Margaret Bonds’ choral/orchestra setting of W. E. B. Du Bois’ Credo, which begins each verse with “I Believe,” assertions of personal truths. Simon’s Affirmations, each beginning with “I Am,” are active self-acknowledgements of personal resolve and strength. Spoken solo affirmations, performed with conviction by singer Judy A. Rose, floated on the layer of stabilizing choral sound toward a strong conclusion. Listen as Jenny Wong, Associate Artistic Director of the LAMC, speaks about Affirmations here.

Geter also selected several pieces that would showcase the talents of guest artists cellist Nancy Ives and soprano Nicole Greenidge Joseph. The first of these, Jesse Montgomery’s Loisaida, for soprano/cello duet and chorus is a vibrant love song for Loisaida, a neighborhood in New York’s Lower East Side. Montgomery set the “Loisaida” text, written by poet, educator and activist John Bimbo Rivas, with soprano moments that played out like recitative – including a stern verbal whacking to the neighborhood for not caring for itself – followed by the choir in loving proclamations “Loisaida, te amo” – shades of a 1940’s love ballad. Soloist Joseph sang the difficult role beautifully and with the drama it deserves. Right along with her was Ives on cello, strong and energetic, doing her own dance, interacting with Joseph as they strode the streets together. The diversity of Loisaida, presented at the 2017 premiere of “The Five Boroughs Songbook II”, is its strength. Listen here to that premiere and you’ll understand.

Resonance displayed its best in Loisaida. At times the treble voices ruled the hall even with everyone lightly miked; tricky finding the right configuration; there isn’t much of a stage footprint to work with once the piano is in place. But Resonance achieved a cohesive choral sound.

Joel Thompson’s Meditation sets twelve words as an unpretentious 2-minute choral mantra: “Even the silence has a story to tell you. Just listen. Listen.” The phrase is from author Jacqeline Woodson’s “Brown Girl Dreaming.” Thompson places a fermata over a rest at the end. It’s for the singers; it worked for the audience, too.

Seven Prayers: Hope for Everyone – A Resonance Commission Premiere

“Commission” and “premiere.” This means only a handful of folks have seen a composer’s creative work before it is handed to the artists privileged to bring it to life for the first time. It’s a thrilling moment for all involved. And having composer Dave Ragland in house added to the anticipation.

Prior to the downbeat of Seven Prayers: Hope for Everyone Katherine Fitzgibbon introduced Ragland, who in introductory remarks quoted Emily Dickinson’s sentiment that hope “never stops at all.”

Seven Prayers is not a choral work in seven movements, it is seven choral portraits of people expressing hope through faith, each voice unique and revealing. You know the way some great portrait artists know how to capture the slight up- or downturn of a mouth, a tilt of head or squint of eye, and magically bring the subject to life? This is what Ragland does in Seven Prayers. Words become musical hues and textures and reveal the person within. 

It was informative – perhaps essential – to have each author’s photo and age displayed as each piece began and to be told that two were Reverends and one a mother – Ragland’s own. But the work begins with the youngest author, Ethan Freeman, age 11.

“Thank You, Lord, for This Day” is a child’s prayer. We are captivated by earnest words spilling forth with heart-melting naivete until young Ethan gives thanks to the Lord, “for keeping us away from gun violence in our schools/And please keep all the homeless kids safe from all the bad things of the world.” Then we are jolted; perhaps more so because to young Ethan it is the norm. But Ragland paints the hopeful Ethan with a charming Charles Schultz/Vince Guaraldi-ish toy-piano accompaniment, beneath a simple choral setting, remaining in a prayer of thanks.

In Seven Prayers II the piano plucks 24-year-old Nikymba Warren’s thoughts from the air over contemplative unison voices that bloom suddenly, only to close again with the words “be brave” acting as a centering and concluding mantra. Then in “Yo le pido a Dios” (Seven Prayers III) the words of Rev. Francisco Garcia (age 44) offer Warren a prayer illuminating the path toward the bravery they seek: 

And I ask God that all humanity fights for a just world,
with more love, peace, justice, mercy and dignity.

Notice here the brevity; the other libretti are similarly concise, and Ragland’s musical treatments of each text last only a few minutes. But he parses and rearranges and repeats, sharing the words and phrases, handing them off between voices. In “Yo le pido a Dios” Ragland gave a soloist the title line, beautifully sung by Rachel Hauge, focusing even more on faith in God. 

Seven Prayers IV is the central point. Good moment for a hymn, a good congregation-gathering chorale, and Ragland does hint for just a moment at the possibility of a horizontal structure with eight beats in each phrase. No, he doesn’t actually go there but it served the purpose, musically praying, as does 62-year old author Rev. Becca Stevens , that we “ground in community.”

The percussive heartbeat of Mother Earth, consistent and unending on a low C# in the piano, laid the foundation for Portland writer, artist and activist Joe Cantrell’s “We Are the Land” (Seven Prayers V). Ragland gives the choir a round that seems to capture other earthly elements – the land, and water – but I may have imagined it–I was completely lost in meditation, as beat and birdsong on keyboard so evoked the nature of Cantrell’s text. Affirming and strong, it was a setup to be receptive to the power of the next a cappella song “I Thank You, God” with text by the composer’s mother.

Ms. Grace Ragland (age 80-ish) embraced the mood and text from Isaiah 40:4 (you know, the one Charles Jennens used in his libretto for Messiah for Handel) “many mountains high and valleys low” and speaks of trials and tribulation; her composer son raises the choral voices upward (as does Handel), carrying his mother’s real message that “in the midst of it all, I give you praise” then descends into the peaceful “wouldn’t take nothing for my journey now.” This is a loving portrait of a woman of faith. 

Seven Prayers: Hope for Everyone ends with a “Benediction” with words by the composer. Three stanzas, each ending with a request: “be our guide,” “be our strength,” “be our hope”. And, of course, as it must be, a final “Amen.”

I wish more people could have heard this premiere and the other works on the concert. The Alberta Rose Theatre, which was filled at 300 seats, is “a wonderful and cozy vibe,” said Liz Bacon Brownson, Resonance Marketing and Operations Specialist, in recent email to OAW. That it is, and ideal in many ways. Yet I wish.

But I don’t think it will be too long before Seven Prayers is in the voices of thousands more singers. As the work unfolded I imagined it in houses of faith, many faiths; on college programs; paired with other works, contemporary or centuries old. And certainly on more – and more and more – beautifully designed Blacknificent 7 concerts around the country.

In post-concert talkback, Associate Conductor Kobayashi mentioned how accessible – how musically available – the work will be for choirs everywhere. Resonance believes they will have the performance video available on-line in the next few months. We’ll spread the word when it’s up so thousands more can view this wonderful premiere. Check out Dave Ragland’s facebook page here.

A more hopeful tomorrow

Resonance sopranos and altos began the second half of the concert with two works – the first, an SSAA & piano arrangement of Deep River by Shawn Okpebholo. The talents of pianist Claire Forstman, who played beautifully in Seven Prayers, were even more evident in the shimmering and harmonically complex keyboard role. After a traditional first verse Okpebholo brought a new approach to the well-known melody with interesting movement and added-note harmonies in the internal voices. But the puzzlingly high tessitura of this piece made it hard for anything else to be heard when the melodic line was in the uppermost voices. More of that beautiful internal swirling would have been yummy.

But then the next piece, Jessie Montgomery’s Danse Africaine with text adapted from the poem by Langston Hughes, was a huge mouthful and a piece that would scare most performers at first viewing. It takes expert musicianship to make it work. Fast paced, percussive vocal syllables, fragments of text and music tossed about in changing meters like a hot potato. The voices play off of and into each other, almost colliding. The challenge is to ride the edge but never let it slip out of hand. Conductor Kobayashi guided the few tempo changes but the Resonance artists hooked in, got into the groove and they seemed to know it. Their eyes were twinkling, they were joyful – they were dancing. 

Cantata for a More Hopeful Tomorrow by Damien Geter was given its Oregon premiere in this Resonance concert. It embraces classic Baroque cantata structure, with the African-American spiritual as aria and chorale, and sets the Bible-ish text of a German Baroque poet alongside a modern purifying text by Portland poet A. Mimi Sei. Such are the many facets of Geter, and all of these Blacknificent 7 composers.

In the first movement, “FEAR,” Geter prepares the listener for sorrow with the J. B. Bach’s Cantata BWV 12, “Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen, Sagen” (Weeping, lamenting, worrying, fearing) with its powerful descending lamentation line. Were others wondering, as was I, when the past will be released – abandoned – perhaps for that more hopeful tomorrow. Indeed, in movement one’s “second half” Geter breaks through assertively with a modern feel informed by Megan Levad’s philosophical text. The music seems to live in the contemporary and the ancient world, and concludes with “for we are made to seek, and try, and dream.” The choir holds on to the “m,” not wanting to let go of the dream.

Movement two, “THE PRAYER,” gives the melody of the prayerful African-American spiritual “I Want Jesus to Walk With Me” to the soprano soloist and Nicole Greenidge Joseph captured the full emotion and beauty though her rich and resonant voice, and the cello solos, were at times buried under the thick choral texture. A dashing little bit of word painting is given to the cello who, after walking tirelessly through the piece, runs almost anxiously toward the end. Nice effect; nicely performed.

Nancy Ives and A. Mimi Sei’s strong poetic voice were on stage together in this “centering” third choral movement, “BREATHE.” Cello harmonics focus the attention as chord tones are stacked, building confidence. Unison serves as a centering element as the choir begins to question, disconnect, displaying uncertainty until they are reminded by Sei’s words to breathe. The movement ends not with the breath shortening but elongating, not tapering off but swirling to the beginning of movement four.

“RESOLVE.” Note that title. It implies a firm determination. And it implies that the “Balm” in the African American spiritual on which this movement is focused is not something abstract and distant, but internal and, like Sei’s “breath” can “heal the sin sick soul.” This is not an arrangement, it’s an orchestration of voices. Each voice supportive of the others, lots of texture, lots of interaction. Geter composes a beautiful counter melody for the cello, a duet for Ives and Joseph (which, since we are silently singing along, is like a duet with us).

Joseph continued, rockin’ the melody, until the choir impulsively broke into “By and By,” igniting a jubilant moment which stirs the air until finally returning seamlessly to the “Balm.” Pop up descant-like solos from the choir were nicely done. The movement ends on a chord of the IV^th, waiting to “resolve” into–

“HOPE.” The text from Walt Whitman’s “Continuities” seems to be fragments musing on existence. “Nothing is ever really lost” begins and ends in solo soprano on the third of the choir – liking nothing is ever really ended. So uplifting. The entire movement is a journey to answer a question, and the question is the answer. But there is no confusion in the concluding theme of the cantata. What began with FEAR moves ever forward and ends with HOPE. 

This concert was seven Black composers, a Blacknificent 7, wanting audiences to know them and their wonderfully diverse creative works – saying this is who “I am.” It was Resonance wanting you to experience the way the choral arts can illuminate the universal themes. And it was both groups actively reaching out to as many people as possible to spread a message of hope for “more love, peace, justice, mercy and dignity” (Rev. Francisco Garcia). 

Complete texts and more information about this Resonance concert are available here.

You can find information about Resonance upcoming concerts here.