Resonance Commissions | Shout Out!
Commission information
Composer: Kenji Bunch
Text: A. Mimi Sei
Conductor: Shohei Kobayashi
Duration: ca. 10’00”
Instrumentation: SATB + cello, caxixi, and tambourine
Performances:
MISSION 15 (June 8th, 2024)
Portland Protests (March 18th, 2023) - premiere
Commission story
Composer Kenji Bunch claps along with the audience following the premiere of his setting of “Shout Out!” (photo by Rachel Hadiashar)
Resonance Ensemble learned in the summer of 2022 that four previously unseen works by Portland-based artist Henk Pander would be on display at Historic Alberta House as part of the 7th Vanport Mosaic Festival. The oil paintings, inspired by Pander’s eyewitness accounts of the downtown protests sparked by viral videos of the state-sanctioned murder of George Floyd, make subjects of the federal courthouse and the justice center – two high profile epicenters of Portland’s racial justice protests in 2020–2021. Upon seeing these buildings-turned-fortresses flanked by armed federal officers in tandem with the increasingly emboldened white nationalist presence around the city, Pander recalled his childhood living in Nazi-occupied Holland at the end of WWII. “This is what fascism looks like,” says Pander. The first of the set, called Stain, features the federal courthouse with a prominent vertical smudge, “a stain on the American justice system.” The paintings, in addition to Pander’s works depicting scenes from the 1948 Vanport flood, really demand our attention, and it was clear that we would need to program the concert to be in dialogue with them.
Along with works by Margaret Bonds, David Lang, and Joel Thompson, video segments from Arresting Power: Resisting Police Violence in Portland, Oregon, and with Pander’s artwork as the frame, we sought to fill out the concert with local perspectives. We commissioned three local poets – Dr. S. Renee Mitchell, A. Mimi Sei, Vin Shambry – to write texts for new choral works by three local composers – Judy A. Rose, Kimberly R. Osberg, Kenji Bunch. We also collaborated with photographer Tojo Andrianarivo who spent several months in 2020 on the ground documenting protests in both Portland and Seattle to select images to project throughout the concert.
About Shout Out!
Composer Kenji Bunch (L) looks on as poet A. Mimi Sei responds to a question by Katherine FitzGibbon
Shout Out! for choir and solo cello was commissioned in 2022 by Resonance Ensemble for their Portland Protests concert. In reflecting on the past several years of tremendous upheaval both nationally and locally, I found myself frankly exhausted and disenchanted with the notion of engaging in this process. Yet it was A. Mimi Sei’s words that met me at that point of exhaustion and reinvigorated me with a positive, uplifting energy. With this work, I wanted to capture that shift in tone from the low point of rage and despair to the hopeful recognition of the potent power of our voices when they unite for a shared cause. I ask members of the choir to play handheld percussion instruments to simulate a march, while the cello adds melodic commentary, at times using blues-inflected gestures that honor that music’s potent ability to celebrate resilience that defies suffering and injustice.
program note by Kenji Bunch