Sweet Honey in the Rock, with Resonance Ensemble
The award-winning vocal group Resonance Ensemble presents a concert of community singing and music that aspires to make the world a better place for all featuring the world-renowned a cappella ensemble Sweet Honey In The Rock®.
Known as one of the most versatile performing collectives in music today with their deep catalog of socially conscious music rooted in African-American history and culture, Sweet Honey In The Rock® celebrates its 50th anniversary this season – and their legacy aligns perfectly with Resonance Ensemble’s mission of performing music that promotes meaningful social change.
American Sign Language Interpretation at Each Performance | Every performance Sweet Honey In The Rock® gives has a core member of the group interweaving dynamic American Sign Language interpretation with the music to create a seamless ballet of movement and voice. This performance will provide an artistic bridge between the Deaf and hearing worlds.
Resonance to Perform as the Opening Act for Both Concerts | Resonance Ensemble will open for the main act with a set of selections from their own award-winning a cappella commissions for social justice. Works include pieces by composers Jasmine Barnes, Cecille Elliott, and Damien Geter.
Join us for this remarkable event as Resonance Ensemble and Sweet Honey In The Rock® join forces to create an unforgettable evening that resonates with the power of the human voice.
FEATURING
Sweet Honey in the Rock
Musicians from Resonance Ensemble, Katherine FitzGibbon, conductor
In its fifteenth season, Resonance Ensemble, an award-winning, professional vocal ensemble based in Portland, Oregon, creates powerful programs that promote meaningful social change. Resonance’s award-winning programming takes a radically collaborative approach, developing concerts in conversation with community partners. Resonance commissions and champions new works by composers and poets whose stories have been underrepresented on the concert stage. For more information on Resonance and their 15th anniversary season, visit resonancechoral.org.
Sweet Honey in the Rock® is an American three-time Grammy Award–nominated troupe who express their history as Black women through song, dance, and sign language. Originally a four-person ensemble, the group has expanded to five-part harmonies, with a sixth member acting as a sign-language interpreter. Founded in Washington, D.C., in 1973 by Dr. Bernice Johnson Reagon as part of the D.C. Black Repertory Theater Company with Carol Maillard, Louise Robinson and Mie, Sweet Honey in the Rock has evolved into an international ambassador of a cappella music. The group was founded on the missions of empowerment, education, and entertainment, and has created a deep catalog of beloved socially conscious music rooted in African-American history and culture, always aspiring to make the world a better place for all.
A recent review on NPR proclaimed, “The history of the group… mirrors the effort of the civil rights movement from which it sprung: to raise voices, to empower individuals and to accomplish together what we cannot accomplish alone.”
Sweet Honey in the Rock has performed all over the world, from the South African Embassy – as a featured performer at the 2013 National Memorial Service for Nelson Mandela, to the White House – at the invitation of Michelle Obama to perform a special children’s concert during the first 100 days of her husband’s presidency. Click here for more information.
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