"An extended six-movement work,
'mid the steep sky's commotion
drew its text from discarded papers, receipts, candy wrappers, and church bulletins that the composer found on Philadelphia's streets, arranged in a fractured order that forms an acrostic sentence fragment about the wind that blows our trash around. Even more intriguing, the printed libretto splinters words and phrases in ways that suggest a fragmentary Dead Sea Scroll. Yet however challenging or even gimicky the piece may have seemed on the surface, the music was wonderfully direct, suggesting whirlwinds at times, ships whistling in the night at others, assuring you that literal meaning was only surfacing occasionally and that words need mainly be enjoyed for their own musicality."
"The concert was among the strongest in The Crossing's 12-year history, with a level of singing where perfectly tuned chords (or even just humming) were consistently radiant. Clarity of expression yielded for listeners immediate apprehension of what could have seemed obscure. Also, artistic director Donald Nally chose a cohesive succession of pieces by Klaus Sandvik and Eriks Esenvalds that contemplated the more beautiful fundamentals of existence - as opposed to, say, social issues - in ways that went beyond words and into nonverbal humming and even whistling."
The full review can be found in the June 12, 2017 issue of
The Philadelphia Inquirer
on page C5.
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