Join Sound Off: Music for Bail to ring in the new year with our first Massivemuse of 2023 in partnership with some new and old friends at Playwrights Horizons Downtown's Moss Theater.

As many Groupmusers may already know, the Groupmuse Foundation's Planetary Music Movement (PMM) is "on a mission to transform music's culture by celebrating and showcasing the artistry of Black musicians and composers" and we've worked together in the past to present string quartets written and performed by incredible Black artists. This time, Sound Off: Music for Bail is collaborating with Planetary Music Movement and renowned activist orchestra PROTESTRA for their largest show yet.

New Orleans native and Rome Prize-winning composer Dr. Courtney Bryan wrote her deeply affecting cantata, Yet Unheard for solo voice, chorus, and orchestra in collaboration with poet Sharan Strange in 2016, after the death of Sandra Bland in pre-trial incarceration. Bryan's response to this death, caused by misogynoir, police violence, and incorporation of money in the US criminal justice system serves as a lodestone to our musical programming. Our vocal soloist in Yet Unheard, the multi-talented soprano/composer/improviser Jasmine Wilson, will present some of her own music following.

Before the cantata, 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. And the show will open with strings, en masse: first, movements from Frederick Tillis' Spiritual Fantasy No. 12 for string quartet, then Akua Dixon's Efua arranged for string ensemble.

*Please note that doors will open at 7:00pm and the show will start at the downbeat of 7:30pm!

Sound Off: Music for Bail is grateful for foundational support for this programming courtesy of the YoungArts Foundation and the Abolitionist Teaching Network.