SEVENTEEN is making its world premiere on November 8, 2024 with the Orlando Philharmonic Orchestra. The piece itself is an orchestral work with narrative voice and is a creative statement in response to the tragic school shooting at Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, FL on February 14, 2018. Composer Ron Ramin and Librettist Portia Kamons realized the bigger story they needed to tell was the subsequent rise of civic engagement among young people across the nation..
“They exploded onto social media” Portia explained. “They were creative, and saturated local, state, and national media with their demands for action. The whole world was astounded as just 5 weeks later, they delivered the first March For Our Lives, the biggest global protest movement since the 1960s.”
Music as a Catalyst for Advocacy
“As a country, we must be capable of listening to each other’s voices. The concert hall seems to be a good place to open our ears.” – Ron Ramin
To begin the project, Ron and Portia decided the libretto would hold the most significance and is the foundation of SEVENTEEN. The libretto is made with verbatim text gathered from a series of interviews Portia did over several years with young activists from across the United States. Rather than amplifying their stories, they wanted audiences to hear about the students’ experiences in their own words.
“You can certainly tell a story through the power of music alone–and there are countless examples throughout the concert repertoire–but we both wanted audiences to listen to their spoken words,” said Ron.
The Research
And so, the research began. Ron and Portia developed an advisory council of leaders in varied aspects of activism or social impact across the arts. They then set out to meet young activists. Whereas some were introduced through council members, others were found on social media. Portia began a series of interviews with dozens of Gen Z activists in 2019 and again later in 2020 during the COVID-19 lockdowns.
“It’s no exaggeration to say I was profoundly impressed by every one of the young people I interviewed,” said Portia. “Their individual stories are remarkable on their own but they also embody the wide-ranging American Gen Z experience. There was an inherent poetry in their stories that was apparent from the very beginning.”
The Process
Since the priority was keeping the focus on the voices, Portia worked to create the story through the libretto and Ron would then integrate music into the work. “Once I completed one of the movements we’d discuss in detail and make some adjustments, sometimes to the text, sometimes to the placement of the music,” Ron explained.
When asked about some of the challenges they faced while composing this piece, time zones was not one of them. Amazingly, the two collaborated across an eight-hour time difference with Ron in California and Portia in London. Deciding to strike the idea of a multimedia component, they instead decided to integrate a section of “Voices of the Adolescents” by Orlando poet Raquel Perry. Keeping the voices as the main component, Ron identified the support of the dialogue being a challenge. Without having the orchestra music overwhelm the libretto, they were able to maintain this focus and even emphasized the sound of the character of the voices that were interviewed.
The Music
The music itself, except for the musical interlude in Movement III, was not composed until the libretto was well underway.
“The verbatim text was always intended to be the backbone of our work,” Ron emphasized.
The piece itself includes four movements:
- Movement 1, IDENTITY – introduces the young activists using fragments of conversations. It’s a collective portrait, illustrating their youthful vigor, range of experiences, and the common ground they occupy.
- Movement 2, INTERSECTIONS – shifts to individual stories and specific personal experiences.
- Movement 3, IN MEMORIAM – addresses the fact of gun violence on these young people’s lives. They speak plainly, without moralizing. The music invites us to acknowledge their experience as well as reflect on our own.
- Movement 4, INFLUENCE – opens with an energetic exchange of their GOATS (Greatest of all Time) – the people who inspire this group. This leads to contemplation of their collective direction, as they speak directly to the audience, with confidence and resolve, looking to the future they are working to build.
In Movement III, listen for the appearances of the number 17: 17 timpani hits and, later on, 17 strikes on the chimes that pay tribute to the number of lives lost at the Parkland shooting.
The Impact
Across the piece, Portia explained that “every word of SEVENTEEN speaks to the social and political climate Gen Z occupies. It also speaks to their resilience and determination to influence and improve both of the complex and entrenched systems they’re confronting as they become adults.”
Understanding the issues Gen Z faces is one element of the piece. Ultimately, Ron and Portia hope listeners will come away from SEVENTEEN feeling optimism and compassion for young people, and have some interest in the issues the new generations are working to address.
The Future
“We certainly hope that SEVENTEEN will be performed throughout the country,” Portia said when asked about the future of SEVENTEEN. “It gives orchestras an opportunity to engage with their communities and welcome them – especially young people! – into their concert halls for a project that speaks to their concerns and hopes for their future.”
Beyond the world premiere performance of SEVENTEEN on November 8, 2024, Portia Kamons is working with Danish artist Madeleine Kate McGowan on a series of climate-related performance works (one of which is an opera of birdsong) and plans to work with verbatim text in her future works at some point. And while this was the first time working on a social impact project, he’s got an idea for a new project.