Two years ago, in March 2020, all in-person music making for Mirinesse and choirs around the world came to a grinding halt as the covid pandemic raged. We were ready to perform a powerful program, Richer for Her. Additionally, our 2021 program was in sight with an exciting new work, Suffrage Cantata, which we had helped to commission and would help to mark the 100th Anniversary of the 19th Amendment. We ended up singing our Richer for Her songs together in a singer’s backyard as a way to bid a tender farewell to that program. Finally, in January 2022, Mirinesse women – all fully vaccinated and wearing masks – began to rehearse together – some in person, some on live stream – with a commitment to bring the Suffrage Cantata to live performance this March. And we are doing it!
It has been both very emotional and uplifting to be back together. The Suffrage Cantata which captures the struggle for women’s right to vote through women’s voices, piano, strings, and percussion, seamlessly blended with historical images and footage has inspired us all to raise our voices. It is an essential story for these turbulent times, as relevant today as it was at the start of the movement. Experiencing this history through music, where the singers are not only singing text from important moments in this struggle but are also using their voices to describe the emotion of those moments – that’s a meaningful learning experience for both singer and audience.
The 40-minute, five-movement work composed by Andrea Ramsey illuminates some of the figures and events central to the ratification of the 19th Amendment. From composer Andrea Ramsey: “I began the project knowing very little about the 72 years of struggle leading to the 19th amendment, and I completed this work feeling like I know so many of these women so intimately. It is impossible in a 40-minute work to even scratch the surface of all the figures and events, but I filtered the work through those that grabbed my attention and best embodied the quote “well behaved women rarely make history.” These women were American heroes and part of one of the largest sustained protest movements in history. Only one of the original signers of the Declaration of Rights and Sentiments at Seneca Falls in 1848 was alive to see women vote in 1920. This was a torch passed forward from one tenacious woman to another until the work was completed.”
Rounding out our concert will be four of the songs from the Richer for Her program, all featuring texts by female poets. The breadth of the texts and diversity of the settings serve to express the complexity of being a woman in our world. Please join us in March 2022 for this dynamic program.
Rebecca Rottsolk, Artistic Director