More about the show

Created in partnership with esteemed choral conductor and founder of The Heritage Gospel Chorale of Pittsburgh, Dr. Herbert V.R.P. Jones, celebrated mezzo-soprano and Resonance Works board member Demareus Cooper, Artistic and General Director Maria Sensi Sellner, and Associate Producer Robert Frankenberry, this major choral-orchestral concert program for our 2024-25 season features lauded mezzo-soprano Lucia Bradford, who performed Perry’s Stabat Mater in our 2020 digital season, rising star Victory Brinker, our Resonance Chamber Orchestra and Reson8 Vocal Octet, performing with an expanded Festival Chorus.  

Joel Thompson’s Seven Last Words of the Unarmed is a powerful work that uses the liturgical format of The Seven Last Words of Christ, with each movement quoting the last words of an unarmed Black man before he was killed. We are placing this powerful recent work in conversation with two other pieces that also utilize ancient forms and timeless texts interpreted through a contemporary American lens - Julia Perry’s setting of the 13th century poem about the sorrowful mother of Christ, the Stabat Mater, and Leonard Bernstein’s implicit plea for peace in combining Christian and Hebrew choral traditions in his Chichester Psalms.

"The final line in Bernstein’s work (from Psalm 133) struck a particular chord in me - “How good and pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity.”  We continue to struggle to achieve this goal, in our communities, in our society, and in the world. But it is a powerful call to action, an ideal to continue to strive towards, and we can embody this ideal through music, creating space for empathy, understanding, and connection.” - Maria Sensi Sellner