CMA Department Concert: Sounding Resilience

In tonight’s Contemporary Musical Arts Department production, NEC students and faculty explore how music has inspired movements, united communities, and given voice to struggles for peace, justice, and equality across generations. Rooted in the histories of the Civil Rights, Labor, Suffragist, Anti-war, and Environmental movements in the United States, the program also engages with protest and liberation songs from around the world, including music that has emerged in response to today’s most urgent social issues.

Blending traditional songs, contemporary works, original compositions, and music by artists such as Peggy and Pete Seeger, Bernice Johnson Reagon, Fay Victor, Sam Cooke, Charlie King, Nina Simone, Marvin Gaye, Abbey Lincoln, and Max Roach, performers examine the enduring power of music to build solidarity, sustain resistance, and inspire collective action.

More than a concert, Sounding Resilience is a celebration of the human spirit — a dynamic exploration of how artists transform pain into purpose, protest into harmony, and song into a force for hope, healing, and change.

Produced by Bella Navarro & Linda Chase.