The Choral Society of Pensacola is preparing for two weekend performances of the inspiring program, Still Rising, which dramatizes the struggle of American women for the right to vote. The concert will take place this Friday and Saturday in the University of West Florida Center for Fine and Performing Arts.
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The centerpiece of the program is a multimedia presentation of the Suffrage Cantata, composed by Andrea Ramsey in 2021, according to Choral Society Artistic Director Peter Steenblik.
“It was premiered at colleges and community choirs across the country,” said Steenblik during a recent rehearsal at Pensacola State College’s Ashmore Auditorium. “We are the first choir in Pensacola to perform this massive work. She (Ramsey) takes direct quotes from Susan B. Anthony, Ida B. Wells, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Alice Paul, and puts music to these words of them.”
Steenblik says it’s unusual to sing the prose of the historical figures of the suffrage movement, but a women’s chorus comprised of the Choral Society and UWF Concert Choir will be taking it on.
“As an on-ramp to the Suffrage Cantata, the whole choir (tenors and basses), along with them, we'll be singing some words of Frederick Douglass and Ruth Bader Ginsburg,” Steenblik said. “Also, some Maya Angelou is in there to kind of prepare the audience for what they're about to hear.”
The concert will open with a piece by Gustav Holst and Randall Stroope called Homeland, which some may recognize from a recent performance of the Pensacola Symphony Orchestra.
“They did the Holst Planets,” recalled Steenblik of the PSO concert earlier this month at the Pensacola Saenger Theatre. “The melody that's used in this piece called Homeland is from the fourth movement, Jupiter, perhaps the most famous of those works. And that was a popular tune in the 1910s. The poetry was done in 1913, right at the time when all of this was taking place. So, everything has a purpose. And all the music you hear in this concert is relevant now.”
The audience will be invited to participate in the performance of a piece called Resilience. For this selection, the singers will physically set the tempo with their footsteps and humming.
“Resilience is by a Minnesota-born composer, Abbie Betinis,” said Steenblik, calling the piece a simple, one-page street call to arms or call to procession. “And Abbie Betinis, herself, she's a powerful composer and an advocate for human rights.”
After about an hour and a half into rehearsal, it was time to focus on the women’s chorus and their performance of Andrea Ramsey’s Suffrage Cantata, which delves deep into details of the Suffrage Movement.
“We don't want it to feel like a lecture; we don't want to feel like history 101,” said Steenblik, noting that for added interest and movement, the Choral Society has purchased the rights to use a series of slides, created professionally for a Carnegie Hall performance.
“We're hoping that the projections will be done in a multi-sensory, multi-angles fashion — not just on a screen right in front of the audience.”
In another effort to make the subject matter more accessible, the performance will include three narrators.
“It's important to know that all of the words are direct quotes or pulled from letters or pulled from speeches; there's very little artistic liberty being taken with the poetry that we're singing. So yes, we have the three narrators to help with the digestion of the content and wish us luck,” said Steenblik.
The narrator text in one part of the Suffrage Cantata states, “Legally, she was her husband’s property. If he beat her, she had no recourse. If he abused her, she could not divorce him. If he wanted a divorce, he could take her children and leave her destitute.”
Rachel Gibson is one of the narrators or spoken soloists for the performance.
“These women’s stories are so unbelievably important,” said Gibson, acknowledging that it’s been a powerful experience learning and reciting details about the plight of women not so long ago.
“Just the starkness of existence,” she began. “The women were expected to be dutiful wives and mothers and do all the housekeeping. And, they could work, but they could only earn one-third of what the man earns, and her husband could come and get her wages anytime, and she had to pay full taxes on her one-third of income. It’s wild.”
This Choral Society program, highlighting the difficulties of the Women’s Suffrage Movement, coincides with Women’s History Month and the current debate over women’s rights. Planned some eighteen months ago, Steenblik says the timing wasn’t intentional, but it works.
“The mission of the Choral Society of Pensacola is to engage and enrich our community,” stated Steenblik. “And so we hope that this piece not only brings a musical smile, but some knowledge and some enrichment as just as human beings and some understanding of the sacrifices that were made by the women in the early 20th century and those that were advocating for them.”
In addition to the UWF Concert Choir, the Choral Society of Pensacola will be joined by an instrumental ensemble, including the Capstone String Quartet from the University of Alabama.
Still Rising will be performed Friday at 7:30 p.m. and Saturday at 2 p.m. in the UWF Center for Fine and Performing Arts.
Tickets may be purchased at Purplepass.com or through the Pensacola State College Department of Performing Arts ticket office (850-484-1847). For concerns about accessibility or any other questions, email: support@choralsocietyofpensacola.org.
