Resonance Commissions | LISTEN
Video recording of the 2022 performance of LISTEN at Alberta House.
Commission information
Composer: Melissa Dunphy
Text: Anita Hill, Dr. Christine Blasey Ford
Conductor: Dr. Katherine FitzGibbon
Duration: ca. 10’00”
Instrumentation: SSAA
Performances:
LISTEN (October 14-15th, 2023)
We Dissent (October 1-2, 2022)
Women Singing Women (February 3rd, 2019) - world premiere
Commission story
“The premiere of LISTEN was one of the most moving concerts I have ever attended.”
In 2018, many of us watched the Senate confirmation hearings of Brett Kavanaugh, at which Dr. Christine Blasey Ford testified about her experience of assault in high school and how indelible the sound of the laughter of Kavanaugh and his friends was to her. Dr. Ford was vilified for her testimony, and her family received death threats. This mirrored the experience of Professor Anita Hill a generation before, who had testified about the harassment she had received from Clarence Thomas when she was a young law clerk.
Composer Melissa Dunphy with former Resonance Ensemble board president, the late Dinah Dodds looking on at the rehearsal for the premiere of LISTEN.
Angry and feeling helpless, Resonance Artistic Director Dr. Katherine FitzGibbon reached out to composer Melissa Dunphy, and together we envisioned a new choral work, LISTEN, that would amplify the words of these two brave women. While Resonance was no stranger to Dunphy’s work, the result was beyond imagining. The world premiere at Women Singing Women had two sold-out performances. Attendees talked about feeling empowered and having a space to process their own grief—listeners didn't just shed gentle tears, but sobbed audibly.
“I wanted Resonance to create a musical opportunity for audiences to reflect on the ways our culture often dismisses women’s points of views.”
In 2022, those two same Supreme Court justices, Kavanaugh and Thomas, were part of the decision to overturn Roe v. Wade—and with it, curtailed reproductive autonomy for yet another generation. In thinking about the impact of this decision and laws across the country restricting the rights of trans people to make decisions about their own bodies Resonance Ensemble felt it was time to reprise LISTEN.
FitzGibbon had long been a champion of Melissa’s evocative, moving, and bold work. When the opportunity came for us to create our first album, we knew not only would LISTEN lead the CD, but it was the natural choice as the title for the whole compilation. There is no doubt this work will return to Resonance performances in the future, though we hope the need for its message is one day gone.
Read more about how Resonance and Melissa Dunphy have collaborated in this 2019 blog post.
About LISTEN
Dr. Katherine FitzGibbon and composer Melissa Dunphy
Written for the treble voices of Resonance Ensemble, LISTEN’s two movements set testimony by Anita Hill in 1991 and Christine Blasey Ford in 2018.
The work is at times gentle and reflective, and at others boldly confrontational and gutwrenchingly raw.
The songs confront singers and listeners with Hill’s and Blasey Ford’s challenging and powerful words, and raise the question of whether or not the Senate committees—or indeed the world—truly listened to them, while giving many observers whose hearts were broken by these hearings the opportunity for catharsis.
program note by Melissa Dunphy