Today we’d like to introduce you to Kwaku Antwi-Agyei.
Kwaku, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
Resonance Collective began in September 2024 as an offshoot of the Dallas Asian American Youth Orchestra. The founder- Kwaku- wanted to bring together some friends to fill the role at a local performance opportunity in a reception. The reception performance happened on the night of November 29th, 2024 and was a huge success. Following this performance, the founding members of Resonance Collective (Kwaku Antwi-Agyei, Sudha Kodem, Vishal Yedulapuram, XiaoYun Zhang, Samantha Wei, Sokheng Tes, Thalia Hsu, Sanaya Aswani) dedicated themselves to pursuing the status of a Non-Profit organization to promote Resonance Collective’s mission of rekindling the fire for music in the community. Since then, Resonance Collective has had numerous performances all around the DFW area with the most notable performance being their stage appearance for National Ballet of North Texas’ “Poetic Beginnings” Inaugural Performance where they performed the third movement Tchaikovsky’s “Souvenir De Florence”. Resonance Collective has had a fluid number of members since its beginning and is always welcoming new members.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Being a stand-alone, student led ensemble has had its challenges. There have been times that we struggled with finding performance opportunities, finding musicians, or even putting together certain performances. A major contributor to this struggle is the simple fact that we are all high-schoolers. As a result of this, we do not always have aligned schedules which can be very difficult to dance around. Another issue of ours has been finding musicians as it is very difficult to appeal to the audience we seek. We have managed to push through these challenges however and are hoping that the road ahead will give us more opportunities to grow!
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
Resonance Collective is a Chamber Strings Ensemble. As such, we step outside of the traditional orchestral setting where there is a conductor and instead use our musicality and non-verbal communication to make music together. We love to tackle traditionally difficult pieces that most high school string ensembles would not attempt, such as Elgar’s “Introduction and Allegro”.
We believe our biggest outstanding feature is our complete independence and ability to govern ourselves while making Resonance Collective a fun environment for each and every member.
How can people work with you, collaborate with you or support you?
Resonance Collective asks no more of the community than for support through attendance at performances and online publicity support. We would love to have our name out there to help us reach a larger audience. Another very helpful contribution would be participation in Resonance Collective! We are constantly looking for new members and would love to welcome anyone who is interested!
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/resonancecollectivecse?igsh=eXZ2bGc5aXBhMzhn&utm_source=qr
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/share/1XgqsbHZ2L/?mibextid=wwXIfr
- Other: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdidFijflIRLro9aiFmz1uTh0gJbUmDBknpeOEiGx9YgsoneA/viewform?fbclid=PAZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAc3J0YwZhcHBfaWQPMTI0MDI0NTc0Mjg3NDE0AAGnhnUnv4-tai7Pq19HBIDNrE0c3a8wBRFJIuDbCbvCm32g-jupx9acfaCIbCQ_aem_hgcY06vR01j0eCfUjcz6aw
