Resonance Commissions | After Time Has Gnawed Away the Field of Dreams
Music video for After Time Has Gnawed Away the Shield of Dreams, featured as part of the Under the Overpass series.
Commission information
Composer: Damien Geter
Text: James DePreist
Conductor: Dr. Katherine FitzGibbon
Duration: ca. 6’00”
Instrumentation: SATB + flute
Performances:
MISSION 15 (June 8th, 2024) - live premiere
Under the Overpass (June 25th, 2021) - film premiere
Commission story
Under the Overpass celebrated Resonance’s hometown of Portland, Oregon, and the space it provided for Resonance artists to continue to create. Starting in the summer of 2020, singers and spoken word artists met in acoustic spaces around the city - six feet apart, masked, and yet together. Viewers experienced music performed in these gritty, hauntingly beautiful spaces.
These five episodes were performed by Resonance artists, and produced in collaboration with Oh! Creative—celebrating the city of Portland with featured local artists, musicians, and famous Portland Bridges.
Each video in the Under the Overpass series showcased a different bridge in Portland. The performances, which are no more than six minutes long, were released and then archived on the organization’s YouTube channel for free, with a complete presentation of all the episodes available worldwide in June 2021.
Full text of James DePreist’s poem.
About After time Has Gnawed Away the shield of Dreams
Composer Damien Geter and flutist Adam Eccleston at the premiere of Geter’s An African American Requiem.
Resonance Ensemble's "Under the Overpass" series culminated in the world premiere of a new commission by Damien Geter for 16 voices, piano, and flute: After Time Has Gnawed Away the Shield of Dreams. Flutist Adam Eccleston joined Resonance Ensemble musicians for this premiere.
Geter sets a poem about memory and hope for a phoenix rising by the beloved late American conductor and honored laureate music director of the Oregon Symphony, James DePreist. Not only did Maestro Depreist's wife Ginette DePreist give us permission to use her husband’s poetry, she was with us when we shot the video. We are so grateful to Ginette DePreist for her time and generosity, and to Damien Geter and all the musicians for creating something so beautiful with maestro DePreist’s words.
In addition to marking this moment of transition from our pandemic time into what we hope will become a more just new normal, this work is dedicated to the victims of the 1921 Tulsa Massacre, that we may remember that appalling violence of 100 years ago and dedicate ourselves to combating racism in our own time.
program note by Damien Geter