A local choir is singing for women across history, including the suffragettes who secured voting rights

Composer Jocelyn Hagen looked at her career in the early part of the 2010s, and realized that she was getting short pieces programmed here and there, but nothing larger. “I decided then that I needed to start writing larger works,” she said, “because we need more works by women that can take up that space.”

Larger commissions were out there, but elusive: “Men were getting those commissions but not me,” she said.

Her “multimedia symphony” titled “Here I Am,” receiving its Illinois premiere March 20 and 22 at Grace Lutheran Church in River Forest from the choir Consonance, proves that women can get big commissions. Hagen’s piece takes that milestone literally, celebrating the achievements and wisdom of women across history.

The commission, originally from the Arizona-based True Concord Voices & Orchestra, arose domino-effect-wise out of her first big project, “The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci.” She bootstrapped “Notebooks” by organizing several musical ensembles into a consortium to split the cost of commissioning, and also to ensure more performances. True Concord loved “Notebooks” so much, they asked Hagen for another big piece, to honor the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which granted women the right to vote.

Premiering in the Chicago area during Women’s History Month, the 45-minute “Here I Am” sets quotations by 47 women throughout history, such as Virginia Woolf, Shirley Chisholm, Lucretia Mott, Audre Lorde and Malala Yousafzai, sometimes spoken and sometimes sung, for a chorus of men and women, a soprano soloist and instrumentalists. It also entails projections of portraits of the quoted women that Hagen commissioned.

The subject matter of the quotations goes beyond women voting. “I wanted it to be bigger than the suffrage movement,” she said. “Allowing us to vote is a validation of women’s voices, and I wanted to continue that journey by validating the voices of women from around the world and from across time.”

Hagen says she also had heard about several other commissions in honor of the 19th Amendment’s centenary — by Julia Wolfe, Melissa Dunphy and Andrea Ramsey, for three — and saw the broader subject matter as a way to distinguish her own contribution. (The Chicago Symphony Orchestra co-commissioned Wolfe’s “Her Story” and performed it in January 2023.)

In the piece, Hagen makes an effort to represent voices on the left and right, among them Barbara Bush and Margaret Thatcher. “I didn’t want it to be politically driven,” Hagen said, “but the suffrage movement was a progressive movement.” She said she heard about a chorus member in Minnesota withdrawing during preparations because of political differences, and at a performance in St. Louis, two men walked out.

But others in the early audiences were awestruck, including Michael Costello, the artistic director of the Chicago-area choir Consonance. “I knew immediately when I heard the premiere that this is a work that I wanted to program,” Costello said.

Consonance changed its name at the start of the 2024-25 season from Chicago Choral Artists. Longtime choral-music fans may remember that before that it was called the James Chorale. “Consonance” as a musical term refers to collections of notes that sound stable and harmonious together, as opposed to dissonance. Costello said there was some concern that people might hear the name as “consonants” instead, and amusingly, if you try to visit the URL NotVowels.com, it refers to Consonance’s site.

Part of the choir’s mission is to lift up marginalized communities and voices. “It’s no accident that this organization has chosen to take on issues that we’re facing today in the current political and societal makeup of our country,” Costello said.

Mounting “Here I Am” is a significant undertaking, what with the projections, the instrumentalists and a difficult soprano solo. “It’s a representation of what [women] are capable of when we are allowed to really shine,” Hagen said of the solo part.

The instrumental ensemble requires three percussionists and an extensive battery of instruments, including uniquely calling for metal trash cans and glasses that shatter when thrown in them — like a symbolic ceiling. Costello said Consonance performed a piece last year that utilized tuned wine glasses, which they chose to buy and keep in storage. They remembered thinking, “Well, we should just keep these because we’re gonna break them next year.”

Well, next year is now. It’s not only Women’s History Month, but it’s also a month where we are voting here in Illinois. The 19th Amendment may be 106 years old, but it’s very much alive.