Resonance Ensemble: Safe Harbor
Aerocade Music

On the double-album release Safe Harbor, the innovative Portland-based choral outfit Resonance Ensemble performs twelve world-premiere commissions that capture the challenging times we live in and explore issues of race, sanctuary, resilience, and hope. Presented in two sections, REflect, which meditates on histories, and REimagine, which invites listeners to imagine a world of safety, inclusion, and connection, the recording aspires to be transformative and meets that goal. The works confront head-on real-world matters such as the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor and the dangers young Black men encounter in their dealings with the authorities. Whereas the titular work by Joe Kye grapples with another pressing issue, the immigrant experience and the ongoing humanitarian crises at our borders, the live rendition of Mari Esabel Valverde's We Hold Your Names Sacred honours the memory of transwomen of colour who've lost their lives. It's impossible to hear Safe Harbor and not be affected.

Helming the company are: Katherine FitzGibbon, its founder and Artistic Director; Shohei Kobayashi, co-Artistic Advisor and Associate Conductor; and Damien Geter, composer and co-Artistic Advisor. FitzGibbon is otherwise Professor of Music and Director of Choral Activities at Lewis & Clark College, while Kobayashi is Assistant Professor of Music and Director of Choral Studies at Reed College. Works by Geter, the company's Artistic Advisor from 2014 to 2024, have been extensively featured by Resonance Ensemble, and, in fact, four of the set's dozen pieces are his. All three are engaged as conductors on Safe Harbor, testifying to their critical contribution to the album's creation.

In addition to Geter, Valverde, and Kye, Safe Harbor features works by Jasmine Barnes, Kenji Bunch, Cecille Elliott, Darrell Grant, Kimberly R. Osberg, and Judy A. Rose. Complementing the delivery of the thirty SATB members are narration by S. Renee Mitchell and Aminata Mimi Sei and instrumental contributions from flutist Adam Eccleston, pianist Hannah Brewer, violinists Gisela Rodriguez Fernandez and Ryan Downs, violist Lisa Zweben, and cellists Valdine Mishkin and Nancy Ives. Musically, the set's a diverse and eclectic collection whose composers fold classical, gospel, soul, spirituals, jazz, and even doo-wop into an expansive tapestry. Many are the colours illuminating this epic collection.

Scored for vocal quintet and about grief and the challenges that accompany it, Elliott's We Are Murmurs inaugurates the project. The composer, also an altoist in the ensemble, is joined by four other singers in this melodically enticing setting. While many of the topics addressed on the album are heavy, Elliott's opener radiates uplift in its celebratory tone and rousing harmonies. Things quickly turn serious, however, when Geter's arrangement of the spiritual “There's a Man Goin' Round” follows. Treating ‘The Man' as a symbol for the systematic racism Black people in particular suffer and senseless shootings that have occurred with stunning regularity, the gospel-inflected piece backs bass Onry and soprano Madeline Ross as soloists with the anthemic power of the choir.

Little clarification for Geter's The Talk: Instructions For Black Children When They Interact With The Police is needed beyond the title, though “the talk” here isn't about “the birds and bees” but instead what a black child needs to do to survive a police encounter. Augmented by the singers' vocalizing (“Keep your hands where they can see them”) and punctuated by syncopated handclaps, Mitchell's spoken contribution (“Be polite, save your rage”) lends extra resonance to the timely advice the piece imparts. Described as a “poem to the future” that draws from the cultural memory and wisdom Black people carry from the past into the present and future, From The Book of Sankofa, Pt 1: Words She Would Have Us Know sets music by jazz pianist Grant to words by Sei. A remarkable fusion of choral singing, jazz harmonies, and classical composition, the ambitious work moves from a lyrical, solo cello-enhanced first stanza (“A sacred longing opens up a heart in song”) and darker second (“A soul drenched in battle”) to an optimistic third (“A sweet haven for dreams laced in song”) and affirmative fourth (“Where once broken, now restored and strong”).

Kye, who composed Safe Harbor and contributes solo violin to the performance, drew on his journey as a Korean child moving to America with his parents. Korean and American folk music are sensitively wedded in this deeply personal, fifteen-minute presentation. Blossoming out of its gentle beginnings (violin shadings coupling with cuckoo-like vocal effects), the piece grows ever more engrossing as the singers gloriously swoop and its stirring melodies (“Remember me, don't forget me”) register. It's not all sweetness and light, however, as Kye also integrates the myriad difficulties an immigrant Asian-American adult experiences in the United States. Moving on to the project's REimagine section, the second half's enlivened by the jazzy vocal stylings of Barnes's “Normal Never Was,” its words by Sonya Renee Taylor riffing on pre-pandemic life and the opportunity to right wrongs in the post-pandemic period. Hearing the vocal soloists brightly cooing “We will not go back to normal, normal never was” is surely one of the album's highlight moments.

“Agnus Dei,” a powerful a cappella movement from Geter's large-scale An African American Requiem (which memorializes Black Americans lost to racial violence in the United States) sets the stage for Rose's Re-flec, whose text by Vin Shambry memorializes Taylor and other victims. The composer purposefully begins with her (“Breonna, can you hear me? / Can you hear me a-cryin' for you?”) as Rose felt there had been greater focus on Floyd's murder due to the widely seen video. Invigorated by the positive uplift of Sei's words, Bunch wrote Shout Out! to emphasize the impact many voices can have when united in common cause—a fitting closing statement for this socially engaged collection. Space limitations preclude discussions of all twelve works, but suffice it to say all are compelling and important parts of the recording's complex fabric. Safe Harbor is a monumental statement from this vital vocal ensemble and clearly deserving of recognition.

April 2026