The Crossing 2022 In Review
Gary says: Give!
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“I’m giving to The Crossing’s End of Year Campaign at the actual end of the year… and making sure 2023 is full of compelling provocative choral music
I want to be a part of creating!”
- Llamacorn Gary Cooper, fan (and mascot)
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Here’s a look back at 2022, reminding me (G. Cooper, Pink Animal)
why I think this (supporting The Crossing) is important!
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We had a Classic Pandemic Tour™, originally scheduled with the Dublin Guitar Quartet. But then, no international travel = no guitars! So, we trekked on unaccompanied, with a great run in Richmond (thanks to the university staff!), an incredibly beautiful snowfall for our Longwood Gardens performance, a great time at Lafayette and Hamilton Colleges, and a couple of ‘this didn’t actually happen’ shows, due to ice and illness. |
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Gary’s Mission Moment:
On tour, we bring our ever-expanding American repertoire of new choral works to lots more people – and we make new, long-lasting relationships that help us make new, long-lasting commissioned works, premieres, and recordings!
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The world fell apart (again) because of Vladimir Putin’s illness.
But we made progress on other fronts at The Crossing: The DEI Task Force became a board committee at The Crossing, moving it from an initiative to an organic, guiding element of our organization.
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We premiered Stacy Garrop’s startlingly honest rumination on aging, In a House Besieged, setting Lydia Davis’ words. A commission for The Crossing and our organist Scott Dettra from the Cleveland Museum of Art (thanks Tom Welsh!), the work premiered in the museum’s resonant auditorium which, quite uniquely (maybe even curiously?) has a fantastic pipe organ! Then on to Shadyside Presbyterian Church in Pittsburgh for Performance 2 (thanks Mark Anderson) and onward to home and a final concert at St. Mark’s Church, Locust Street.
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Gary’s Mission Moment:
Though we are dedicated to making many works looking at social justice, Stacy's work reminds us that non-political works addressing the life issues all of us grapple with also hold an important place in our emerging canon.
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Nominated for the Grammy as Best Choral Performance, Rising w/ The Crossing did not win. (We love it all the same..and congrats to our friends at the LA Master Chorale for walking away with this one at the ceremony, which was postponed from January…due to you-know-what.)
And another tour, this time to Kalamazoo and Western Michigan University to share our music with another generation on choral singers and conductors, led by the inspiring Dr. Kim Adams. While there, we had the honor of singing at our friend Tom Kasdorf's memorial – a beautiful tribute to Kalamazoo's musical treasure.
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Gary’s Mission Moment:
All of our recordings – 29 to date, thanks to a tireless Anonymous Donor – spread our commissioned new works across the globe, encouraging more performances of the choral music we believe in: works that tell the challenging stories of our time. (Grammy nominations help that too.)
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A welcome, quieter month, as rehearsals for The Month of Moderns 2022 get started.
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All hell breaks loose with The Month of Moderns 2022.
We opened with two world premieres: Aaron Helgeson’s long-awaited The Book of Never, a work we could never have known on commissioning it years ago that it would carry a poignant and wrenching connection to Ukraine. With Marcos Balter’s kaleidoscopic The Book of Colors. That was MoM 1.
MoM 2? Welp, that was supposed to be JACK Quartet visiting for a big piece by Chaya Czernowin. Instead, we got that thing that’s been going around. Or something like that. No MoM 2.
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MoM 3: Not to worry! A swift recovery and a triumphant return with the world premiere of Tawnie Olsen’s intimate Beloved of the Sky, setting writings of painter Emily Carr. Then, the magnum opus that is David Shapiro’s Sumptuous Planet: A Secular Mass. This concert-length work revels in the wonders of the world, through the words of Richard Dawkins, devout atheist, lover of all things in and of nature.
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Gary’s Mission Moment:
Even when we're not singing in public, there are always things happening in the world of The Crossing – as we write this we are preparing to start studio recording sessions on January 2nd of David's Sumptuous Planet: A Secular Mass.
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Album release! Born: Music of Edie Hill and Michael Gilbertson on Navona Records (see November for a fun follow-up!)
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Big Sky! Shara Nova! Montana!* Each exclamation point purposeful, capturing our excitement for a new, concert-length work from Shara Nova, Titration, developed and premiered at the Warren Miller Performing Arts Center (thanks John Zirkle). Then we hit the road: the Ventura Festival in California, our Tiny Desk concert filming in D.C., a recording in Malvern, and a home performance at the Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill.
(We also workshopped Ted Hearne’s Farming in Big Sky – coming to a farm near you in June 2024; thank you, Pew Center for Arts & Heritage!)
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Gary’s Mission Moment:
Shara’s new work, Titration, takes us on a journey of self-exploration about how to process historic emotions held in our vagal nerves. Authentic in every measure, it considers our rage, our racism, our desire to grow and develop.
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*(Montana, where that pink, sage llamacorn first joined
The Crossing in August 2019, found waiting for us
at a gas station somewhere near Belt, MT!)
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A big month, that began with a big announcement: Ayanna Woods becomes our first Resident Composer! The Chicago-based singer, bass player, composer, arranger will hang out with us off and on throughout the 2022-2023 Season leading to a new work for premiere in September 2024! (And, while here, she’s creating things with our friends at The Pennsylvania Girlchoir.)
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We launched the 2022-2023 Season: Cultivate/Curate of farm and food and land with “Walking the Farm: A Progressive Concert,” taking our audience on a journey around Kings Oaks Farm in Bucks County that featured a complex, stunning world premiere from George Lewis A Cluster of Instincts – for 24 solo voices. We sang, we ate, we drank. Classic Crossing.
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Another album release: John Luther Adams’ Sila; the breath of the world, which we premiered in Summer 2014 at Lincoln Center and finally recorded, with JACK Quartet and ensembles from the U of Michigan (thanks to the tireless Doug Perkins!). On Cantaloupe Records.
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Our Tiny Desk concert is launched by NPR (thanks Tom Huizenga)! |
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Gary’s Mission Moment:
This concert with selections from Shara’s Titration has been viewed 65,000 times on YouTube. Gary says, “Let’s get a national dialogue going about the role of choral music in examing the difficult social issues of our time!” Shara says it best on Tiny Desk: it’s “about how we handle hard things.”
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Finally, after a 2.5 year delay (because…guess), Michael Gordon’s Travel Guide to Nicaragua is premiered, bringing together all kinds of friends: Carnegie Hall (co-commissioner and presenter for our NYC performance), Congregation Rodeph Shalom (co-presenter in Philadelphia), Penn Live Arts (co-commissioner), cellist Maya Beiser, and, of course, Michael, whose music we’ve sung in many places (and, in fact, is the reason Gary is named Gary: from a work he wrote for us in Big Sky about the Wild West). Fun to be back in New York!
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Gary’s Mission Moment:
The stories that Michael tells in Travel Guide record a history of one, small corner of the Holocaust that is alarmingly relevant to the rising antisemitism of our time.
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Another album release: Tyondai Braxton’s sumptuous Telekinesis with the Metropolis Ensemble, The Brooklyn Youth Chorus, and Andrew Cyr. On New Amsterdam/Nonesuch.
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Oh, and Born: music of Edie Hill and Michael Gilbertson was nominated for the 2023 Grammy Award in Best Choral Performance! Our seventh consecutive year of nominations. (For the record, JLA’s Sila: the breath of the world was also nominated…for Best Orchestral Performance!)
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Gary’s Mission Moment:
Gary becomes optimistic about the world when an album of The Crossing – on which the most substantial piece is an extended lament on the absence of birds driven extinct by humans – is nominated for a Grammy!
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Another premiere, this time by Caroline Shaw. Her Ochre anchored The Crossing @ Christmas 2022. The Earth. Us. Relationships.
More Farming workshops…we’re figuring this piece out (and we love the opening duet between William Penn and Jeff Bezos).
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Another album release: the digital drop of Carols after a Plague on New Focus Recordings – our big 2021 project for The Crossing @ Christmas that was supposed to come ‘at the end of the pandemic.’ Sigh.
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Gary’s Mission Moment:
Carols after a Plague is a true record of our time, with works from 12 composers of incredibly varied and diverse histories.
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“Oh,” Gary concludes:
“Life with The Crossing is just so weird and wonderful.”
We couldn’t agree more.
Join Gary and a whole bunch of people who have already made their End of Year gifts – and keep the new works coming!
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Thanks, Peace, Happy 2023,
From the Whole Community of The Crossing
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All photos by Kevin Vondrak and Donald Nally |
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New music only happens through your support. |
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