Resonance and Remembrance: Garrop, Geter, and a Community United in Music

On October 18, 2025 the Chicago Philharmonic and Ear Taxi Festival presented the World Premiere of Stacy Garrop’s Invictus and the Midwest Premiere of Damien Geter’s An African American Requiem.

The concert marked the culmination of a two-year journey, shaped by imagination, collaboration, and care. From its earliest conception to its final performance, the project brought together a remarkable coalition of artists, partners, and supporters whose collective efforts made the event possible. Among them: Ear Taxi Festival, the Apollo Chorus of Chicago, Chicago Urban League, the American Composers Forum, Merit School of Music, the Harris Theater for Music and Dance, Cedille Records, and many others. It truly took a village.

At the heart of the program were composers Damien Geter and Stacy Garrop, two extraordinary artists who have persevered in an industry not built by or for them. Through their music, they offered stories of resilience, healing, and hope.

This concert stood as a testament to what becomes possible when ideas meet opportunity. The Chicago Philharmonic was honored to present the work of these extraordinary composers and to offer a space where their music reminded us all what it means to endure, to create, and to belong.

“It’s really exciting to partner with folks, to dream something up, to bring something new into the world. The coolest thing about having a vision is that one day, years later, you get to stand in that vision made reality. Today we’re standing in Stacy’s vision, in Damien’s vision.”
-Terell Johnson, Executive Director

Stacy Garrop’s Invictus: A Dazzling Debut

“Prolific as she is, Garrop has never written a piano concerto. She burst into the genre with Invictus, played with uncompromising intensity by pianist Marta Aznavoorian and the Chicago Philharmonic.”
—Hannah Edgar, Chicago Tribune

Anchoring the Chicago Philharmonic’s performance, and the finale of the triumphant Ear Taxi Festival, Stacy Garrop’s Invictus delivered a gripping narrative of struggle and triumph. Inspired by William Ernest Henley’s poem of the same name, the concerto cast the piano as a defiant protagonist battling against orchestral forces, an allegory of resilience rendered in bold musical strokes. The piece’s four moments follow the first four lines of the poem.

The artistic process behind Invictus was grounded in deep mutual respect and collaboration. Written specifically for Aznavoorian, the work emerged from ongoing conversations between composer and performer. The Chicago Philharmonic, under the direction of Scott Speck, provided a dynamic and responsive orchestral partner, elevating the premiere with clarity and conviction.

“We talked a lot about what she’s looking for in a concerto and I thought about what I like seeing her play. She has this great rhythmic, athletic, and driving energy that can be used very effectively.”
—Stacy Garrop on Marta Aznavoorian

“Every phrase is deeply weighted. She doesn’t just produce pieces. Every work that she does is deeply thought out, essential.”
—Marta Aznavoorian on Stacy Garrop

A recording of Invictus, performed by the Chicago Philharmonic and Marta Aznavoorian, is slated for release by Cedille Records in 2026, ensuring the concerto’s journey will continue well beyond its unforgettable debut.

Damien Geter’s An African American Requiem: A Monumental Work of Grief, Resistance, and Hope

Inspired by Verdi’s Requiem and Britten’s War Requiem, Geter envisioned a piece that would honor lives lost to racial injustice while drawing deeply from Black musical and literary traditions. “If I’m looking at the past… and I’m thinking Verdi wrote my favorite requiem and I’m using that as a basis for the entire piece,” Geter explained in a discussion before the World Premiere of the piece in 2022, “and this is a piece dedicated to Black people who have been murdered in this country due to racial violence, then I need to pull from the Black diaspora.”

The result was a wide-ranging tapestry of texts and music: civil rights declarations (including Ida B. Wells’ 1909 speech “Lynching Is Color-Line Murder”), poetry, and spirituals such as There’s a Man Goin’ Round, Kumbaya, and Walk Together Children. Geter replaced select traditional Latin movements with an English counterpart. In the final movement, In paradisum (with the first line of the traditional libretto translating to “May the angels lead you into paradise”) directly quotes Walk Together Children.

“It’s hard to single out moments from a work that holds centuries of grief, endurance and memory in 80 minutes of music,” wrote Hannah Edgar in the Chicago Tribune. “But one, featuring the gleaming tenor Cameo Humes, still chills me to the bone. After a very Verdian Dies irae, Humes repeats the final words of Eric Garner with increasing desperation. As Humes’ desperation increases, however, so does the orchestra’s fury. He’s drowned out entirely by the ensemble until, what feels like an eternity later, it relents. He whispers the refrain once more in a heavy, graveyard silence: I. Can’t. Breathe.”

The performance was nothing short of riveting. From the first note to the final silence, the audience was locked in, bearing witness to a work that demanded attention, reflection, and collective reckoning.

It Takes a Village: A Full Community Experience