Soprano Amy Selby will be featured with mezzo-soprano Veronica Williams, performing Songs of Remembrance and Resistance by Kevin March at the 2nd Annual FSOAS Concert.

After a national call for composition entries, the winning pieces (poetic art songs for voice and piano penned in the past five or so years) were chosen for this year's showcase concert performed by One Ounce Opera (OOO) Company Members.

One night only!

Doors open at 7:30 am. More information can be found on the OOO Facebook page.

As reviewed by Robert Faires in The Austin Chronicle:

"Nevertheless, she persisted."

When that phrase appears in an art song, repeated over and over to punctuate stories of women who have stood against prejudice, harassment, and danger, then you know this isn't some musical relic of a previous century but a work that is, as One Ounce Opera says, fresh-squeezed. And indeed, the cycle with that topical refrain, Kevin March's "Songs of Remembrance and Resistance," was receiving its premiere at OOO's second concert of new art songs. Of the seven compositions this year, March's was the only one with a modern political resonance, but all struck the ear with the crispness of our time, of now, even when they drew on the past. [...]

But in the end, the work that felt most current, like it had just popped up on our news feed, was the one with the phrase that's now a rallying cry for women. With verses paying tribute to Rosa Parks, former slave Harriet Jacobs, Minnesota State Representative Ilhan Omar, and Klara Baic, a Serbian mother who sheltered Jewish boys during the Holocaust, "Songs of Remembrance and Resistance" sketched out profiles in courage and compassion with March's music capturing the drama of its narratives. Soprano Amy Selby and mezzo Veronica Williams clearly felt the power of these women's stories and channeled it, with Williams positively regal in her resolve. In closing the concert, this work proved that art songs are not just alive in our time, but relevant as well.