Courtney Bryan’s “Yet Unheard”: A Sound Off x PMM x PROTESTRA x VOCAL-NY Massivemuse

For their largest concert yet, abolitionist musical collective Sound Off: Music
for Bail performs music by Frederick Tillis, Akua Dixon, and Courtney
Bryan.
In collaboration with Groupmuse’s Planetary Music Movement and PROTESTRA, Sound Off: Music for Bail presents a hybrid program of chamber and orchestral music by leading contemporary and historical Black American composers alongside Yet Unheard, a cantata dedicated to the life and memory of Sandra Bland by Rome Prize-winning composer Dr. Courtney Bryan at Playwrights Horizons Downtown. Serving as Sound Off’s inaugural foray into the orchestral field, the concert will be led by rising conductor and 2022 Tanglewood Music Center fellow Christina Morris and feature soprano soloist and 2022 Jazz Leaders Fellow Jasmine
Wilson.
Also on the program are selections from Frederick Tillis’ Spiritual Fantasy No. 12, Akua
Dixon’s EFUA, and two of Wilson’s own compositions: Greener and Ruminations, both interpreted
by orchestra for the first time . Nestled between musical performances, Voices of Community Leaders
and Activists NY (VOCAL-NY) Director of Organizing, Jawanza James Williams, will present
testimony on VOCAL-NY’s work, the progress of justice work, and its future.
Sound Off: Music for Bail is a collective of musicians, activists, and thinkers dedicated to
combining music performance with educational work that envisions alternatives to the current state of
policing and imprisonment in the U.S. Their online programming includes free and low-cost
instrument workshops, masterclasses with expert musicians, and concerts that raise funds for cash bail
across the country. Sound Off: Music for Bail’s concert programming is funded by community
support and grants from the YoungArts Foundation and Abolitionist Teaching Network.