Katherine FitzGibbon interviewed for Wall Street Journal article
Alt-Classical Surge Hits the Northwest
by Brett Campbell, December 13, 2011
Many of the alt-classical adventurers share a collaborative spirit. "Relative to other places where I've lived and worked, Portland has an incredibly vibrant and dynamic alternative classical-music scene," says Katherine FitzGibbon, who moved to Portland from Boston in 2008 to direct choral programming at Lewis & Clark College. Her Resonance Ensemble regularly programs contemporary and 20th-century choral music, and collaborates with poets, painters, dancers and other artists. "Everyone wants everybody else's group to be successful," she says. "Everybody's looking for ways to deepen the performing experience and the audience experience as well."
Read the full article online.
Resonance Ensemble's Managing Director interviewed by Oregon Music News
Stephanie Kramer tells about life as a professional choral singer
by James Bash, December 12, 2011
"Portland is a haven for choral singers, including the select few who are paid to sing in choirs. One of the very best singers in this specialized profession is Stephanie Kramer. I’ve heard Kramer sing at a number of choral concerts and have found her name listed in several recordings, including the latest Portland Baroque Recording of the St. John Passion. So, I got in contact with her to find out more about her work as a professional choral singer."
Read the entire interview online.
Review of Song for All Souls in Oregon ArtsWatch
by Brett Campbell, November 4, 2011
"Of the several excellent shows I caught last weekend, Resonance Ensemble‘s performance may linger longest in my memory. Hugo Distler’s theatrical Dance of Death proved to be strangely moving and seemed to emerge from ancient times, despite the occasional modern musical influences. But what really struck home was the sensitive, intimate performance by this all-star team of singers in mostly somber music by Samuel Barber, Johannes Brahms, Maurice Durufle and more. Resonance’s seemingly effortless dynamic shifts seemed perfectly geared to the lyrics’ phrasing and emotional content, and their ability to maintain a rich, firm tone even at the softest volume was especially impressive. At the end of Distler’s piece, when a worthy character achieves redemption, the sun suddenly brightened the stained glass windows at Portland’s First Presbyterian Church."
Article featuring Resonance Ensemble and Katherine FitzGibbon in Oregon ArtsWatch
Choral Revival: Portland’s choral music scene is flourishing
by Brett Campbell, October 28, 2011
The past few years have seen a changing of the guard in Portland’s choral music scene. Last year, the city’s two most influential veteran choral conductors, University of Portland professor Roger Doyle and Lewis & Clark College’s Gil Seeley, retired after three-plus decades of leading two of the city’s three most important choral organizations: Choral Arts Ensemble and Oregon Repertory Singers (ORS). The conductor of the third, Portland Symphonic Choir’s Bruce Browne, had left Portland for a teaching job in Oklahoma a few years earlier, after building Portland State University’s program to national prominence and founding the superb Choral Cross Ties ensemble, which folded after he left.
While the city’s choral scene still flourished during the 2000s (including the founding of strong new ensembles run by Browne’s former students Ryan Heller, David York and Alexander Lingas), some slippage was evident in several corners of the city’s choral establishment, and choral music lovers could have been forgiven for worrying about what would happen in the wake of the departures of these strong leaders.
No more. The recent arrival of two energetic, imaginative young successors to the Big Three have revitalized the programs at PSU and L&C, and the two conductors — Ethan Sperry (whom I profiled last month in Willamette Week) and Katherine FitzGibbon, who directs choral programs at Lewis & Clark, are also running, respectively, Oregon Rep Singers and the recently arrived Resonance Ensemble, which has already established itself as one of the Northwest’s finest vocal groups. (Read the entire article here)
Resonance Ensemble named "Rookie of the Year" in the 2011-2012 Finder: Willamette Week's Guide to Portland
Arts: The 18 Essential Classical Performances
by Brett Campbell, September 2011
Completing its first full season, this assemblage of professional singers is a real all-star team. Under ambitious director Katherine Fitzgibbon, it's tackling fascinating, often new and unfamiliar repertoire and re-energizing the city's already abundant choral scene.
Review from Oregon Music News: Resonance Ensemble conquers the challenges of love and marriage in season finale
by James Bash, May 2, 2011
The singers of the Resonance Ensemble, led by its artistic director Katherine FitzGibbon, explored the concept of “Blessed Unions” in the final concert of its inaugural season on Friday, April 29, at Agnes Flanagan Chapel. The choir undertook a challenging program, singing works by Johannes Brahms, Maurice Duruflé, Benjamin Britten, Sergei Rachmaninoff, and Daniel Pinkham, and topping it all off with a complex work by Igor Stravinsky. (Read the entire review online.)
Willamette Week Preview by Brett Campbell - April 27, 2011
For the culminating event of its first full season, the chorus offers one of the 20th century’s most dramatic artistic breakthroughs: Igor Stravinsky’s ballet cantata, Les Noces (The Wedding). Due to its unusual forces (colossal chorus, piano, soloists and profuse percussion), Les Noces isn’t heard as often as his pioneering work, The Rite of Spring, or even The Firebird or Petrushka, but can be as thrilling, especially in performances by sensitive professional choirs like this one. The concert also features a dancer and includes a more recent wedding cantata by Daniel Pinkham.
Resonance Ensemble is featured in The Oregonian's A&E - Friday, November 12, 2010:
10 Indie Adventures: Quirky performing groups explore lively places outside mass culture by David Stabler.
Classical review: Hectic and haunting performance shows what Resonance Ensemble can do
by James McQuillen, Special to The Oregonian - October 31, 2010
Portland's new professional choir Resonance Ensemble is devoted to exploring the resonance between all kinds of music and its context in history and culture. Friday night's season opener fulfilled the mission in a multifarious look at Halloween -- a packed program drawing on poetry, legend, mystery and comedy in works from composers as diverse as J.S. Bach, Johannes Brahms and Tom Lehrer.
The music ranged wildly, from high art to low and from the laugh-out-loud to the dead serious. Choral songs by Brahms, Maurice Ravel and Einojuhani Rautavaara spoke of terrors both nameless and exhaustively catalogued. The Orpheus legend appeared in two versions, a chorus from Christoph Gluck's "Orfeo" and another from Jacques Offenbach's comic version, "Orpheus in the Underworld," featuring a Galop known to most listeners as the music of the can-can. Ralph Vaughan Williams' "The Lover's Ghost" told of a ghostly ship, while Stan Jones' "Riders in the Sky" offered an eternal cattle drive of the damned. And that's not even the half of it.
Read the entire review online.
Oregon Music News feature by James Bash - October 18, 2010
Katherine FitzGibbon and the Resonance Ensemble program new themes into Portland’s vocal scene
One of the newest professional choirs in Portland is the Resonance Ensemble, which gave its inaugural concert last May under artistic director and conductor Katherine FitzGibbon. Encouraged by the success of that performance, the Resonance Ensemble will open its first full season with a Halloween-themed concert called “The Witching Hour”... Read the entire article here.
Willamette Week Preview by Brett Campbell - May 5, 2010
The PDX Choral Calendar lists almost five dozen choral groups in the area, not counting various school and church choirs. Do we really need another one? Even before its debut concert, the new Resonance Ensemble makes a strong case. Its director, Katherine FitzGibbon, who runs the choral program at Lewis & Clark College, has demonstrated the highest artistry in performances since she arrived in Portland two years ago. And the ensemble, which has already attracted some veteran singers, will be one of Portland’s only professional choruses. Unlike some of our excellent specialty choirs, it’s devoted to a wide range of repertoire that spans centuries and styles, as evidenced by the artistically challenging but ear-friendly program: Baroque masterpieces by J.S. Bach, Heinrich Schütz and Giovanni Gabrieli; Igor Stravinsky’s completion of a Gesualdo motet and, most impressively, Swiss composer Frank Martin’s powerful 1922 Mass for Double Choir.
