Philadelphia based contemporary choral ensemble The Crossing releases their latest collection of premiere recordings of works written for them by Wang Lu, Ayanna Woods, and Tawnie Olson. The ensemble highlights its versatility in works that celebrate lush vocal harmonies and creative approaches to writing for ensemble voices.
| # | Audio | Title/Composer(s) | Time |
|---|---|---|---|
| Total Time | 56:18 | ||
Infinite BodyTawnie Olson |
|||
| 01 | I. Infinite Growth | I. Infinite Growth | 4:56 |
| 02 | II. One Body | II. One Body | 4:08 |
| 03 | III. Do Be Do | III. Do Be Do | 4:25 |
| 04 | IV. Golden Hour | IV. Golden Hour | 7:00 |
At Which PointTawnie Olson |
|||
| 05 | I. Prologue | I. Prologue | 1:33 |
| 06 | II. Beckoned | II. Beckoned | 7:24 |
| 07 | III. The Sounding | III. The Sounding | 10:47 |
Beloved of the SkyWang Lu |
|||
| 08 | I. I went down deep | I. I went down deep | 2:11 |
| 09 | II. I woke with this idea... | II. I woke with this idea... | 2:15 |
| 10 | III. Oh, that lazy, stodgy, lumpy feeling | III. Oh, that lazy, stodgy, lumpy feeling | 1:02 |
| 11 | IV. The subject means little | IV. The subject means little | 4:40 |
| 12 | V. I made a small sketch | V. I made a small sketch | 5:57 |
The Philadelphia based contemporary choir The Crossing is intrepid in their commissioning activities, advocating both for contemporary music in general, and works that speak to social issues more specifically. With this latest release of three new works written for them by Ayanna Woods, Wang Lu, and Tawnie Olson, the ensemble turns its attention to questions surrounding the artistic and creative experience in contemporary society, giving musical space to pieces that endeavor to draw the listener into internal relationships to one’s own work and persistent renewal of purpose.
Ayanna Woods’ Infinite Body examines the impact unseen societal forces have on our bodies and spirits. Specifically focusing on the pressures of inhabiting a late capitalist system and contorting ourselves to navigate through it, Woods’ four movement work features her own texts that engage both the interior and exterior spaces of the self. The opening movement, “Infinite Growth,” alternates between pulsating sung melismas in the tutti choir, and lyrical rumination in a solo voice. “One Body” is a vigorous exhortation towards individual productivity and efficiency, a caffeinated, rhythmic celebration of getting things done whose satirical stance is only lightly veiled. “Do Be Do” thoughtfully asks the question, “What do you do, Do you worry about falling short?” while pointing to the beauties around us—the falling water and the wind blowing in the leaves. “Golden Hour” celebrates the power of human connection, gradually building through an initial quiet halo, richly voiced harmonies, weaving part singing, and finally arriving at an expansive, cathartic passage for a subset of the ensemble singing above a sustained pedal chord in the rest of the choir.
Read MoreAt Which Point by Wang Lu is a three movement setting of two evocative, narrative driven poems by Forrest Gander. The piece opens with a wordless “Prologue” that introduces a sonic vocabulary of quick sliding gestures, trills, and ominous thickly voiced chords that set an unsettled scene. “Beckoned” guides the listener through a surreal encounter with a swarm of stinging bees and a cab ride from a flute playing driver. Wang Lu expertly word paints the quixotic text with an engaging range of vocal techniques, powerful pillars of vertical harmony, and dramatic, foregrounded solo moments. The final movement, “The Sounding,” reaches for more sensual, luminous textures, capturing the poetry’s focus on fleeting moments charged with quiet meaning. For the end of the movement, the ensemble uses mouth harps and Echoes amplification kits to create otherworldly, three dimensional textures. Throughout At Which Point, Wang Lu finds fresh, striking ways to use the voice that create a distinct sound while still taking advantage of the uniquely expressive capacity of ensemble voices.
Commissioned by the Barlow Endowment, Tawnie Olson’s Beloved of the Sky sets five passages from a journal by Canadian author and artist Emily Carr about her working process. Known for her striking paintings of landscapes and Indigenous cultures of the Pacific Northwest, Carr worked outside of the spotlight of the major art centers, focusing on subjects that were not necessarily in vogue but that clearly captivated her creative attention. It is this captivation that Olson focuses on in her setting. “I went down deep” opens with a grounded ascending major second in a solo voice, which gradually expands outward as other voices join to thicken the texture, culminating in a higher arrival on the text, “and dug up.” “I woke with this idea…” zeroes in on an aesthetic color strategy, musically capturing the sense of turning around permutations of possibility in one’s mind. “Oh, that lazy, stodgy, lumpy feeling” opens with an annunciatory unison ensemble melody, splitting into an imitative texture briefly, before coming together again for a homophonic multi-voiced texture in the last two phrases. “The subject means little” searches for the ineffable connective glue that propels the creative process forward and that is at the core of artistic work. Short, charged phrases dominate the opening section before a reverent, sustained texture introduces text that invokes a divine presence, before three towering chords usher in a poignant ending solo over a drone. The final movement, “I made a small sketch,” patiently walks the listener through deliberate steps of developing an idea into something larger. Whispered accompaniment supports a solo on the text, “This is thine hour, O Soul, thy free flight into the wordless,” before the choir repeats the words in overlapping phrases. After a sotto voce wordless chorale, the movement returns to its opening text as each voice sustains and joins an accumulating, shimmering final chord.
– Dan Lippel
Infinite Body was recorded September 12, 2023 at St. Peter’s Church in the Great Valley, Malvern, Pennsylvania, with additional recording December 19, 2023 at Articulate Studios, Bloomsbury, NJ
At Which Point was recorded September 13, 2023 at St. Peter’s Church in the Great Valley, Malvern, Pennsylvania
Beloved of the Sky was recorded December 20, 2023 at Articulate Studios, Bloomsbury, NJ
Recording producers: Paul Vazquez, Donald Nally & Kevin Vondrak
Recording engineer: Paul Vazquez
Assistant recording engineers: Christopher Vazquez & Codi Yhap
Editing, mixing, and mastering: Paul Vazquez
Album artwork by Elizabeth Haidle, docucomix.com
Design & layout: Marc Wolf, marcjwolf.com
The Crossing
The Crossing is a Grammy-winning professional chamber choir conducted by Donald Nally and dedicated to new music. It is committed to working with creative teams to make and record new, substantial works for choir that explore and expand ways of writing for choir, singing in choir, and listening to music for choir. Many of its nearly 170 commissioned premieres address social, environmental, and political issues. With a commitment to recording its commissions, The Crossing has issued 30 releases, receiving three Grammy Awards for Best Choral Performance (2018, 2019, 2023), and eight Grammy nominations.
The 2023-2024 Season includes performances in Stockholm, Helsinki, Houston, Amsterdam, den Bosch, and Philadelphia with major new works from Tania León, David, Lang, David T. Little, Ayanna Woods, Gavin Bryars, and the Philadelphia premiere of Tyshawn Sorey’s Monochromatic Light. Recent projects included Michael Gordon’s Travel Guide to Nicaragua, commissioned for The Crossing by Carnegie Hall and Penn Live Arts; John Luther Adams' Vespers of the Blessed Earth with the Philadelphia Orchestra, also at Carnegie Hall; Julia Wolfe’s unEarth with the New York Philharmonic’s in its inaugural season in the new Geffen Hall; Shara Nova’s Titration at Muziekgebouw in Amsterdam; a tour featuring a world premiere of Jennifer Higdon and additional commissioned works of Caroline Shaw and Edie Hill; and Ted Hearne’s Farming, premiering in a field at Kings Oaks Farm in Bucks County, PA, and touring to Haarlem, The Netherlands, and Caramoor Center for Music and Arts.
The Crossing collaborates with some of the world’s most accomplished ensembles and artists, including the Philadelphia Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, American Composers Orchestra, Network for New Music, Lyric Fest, Allora & Calzadilla, Bang on a Can, Klockriketeatern, and the International Contemporary Ensemble. Similarly, The Crossing often collaborates with some of world’s most prestigious venues and presenters, such as the Park Avenue Armory, Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts at the University of Pennsylvania, David Geffen Hall at Lincoln Center, Disney Hall in Los Angeles, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Menil Collection in Houston, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, The Big Sing (formerly Haarlem Choral Biennale in The Netherlands, The Finnish National Opera in Helsinki, The Kennedy Center in Washington, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Carnegie Hall, Winter Garden with WNYC, and Yale, Harvard, Duke, Northwestern, Colgate, and Notre Dame Universities.
The Crossing, with Donald Nally, was the American Composers Forum’s 2017 Champion of New Music. They are the recipients of the 2015 Margaret Hillis Award for Choral Excellence, three ASCAP Awards for Adventurous Programming, and the Dale Warland Singers Commission Award from Chorus America.
https://www.crossingchoir.org/Donald Nally collaborates with creative artists, leading orchestras, and art museums to make new works for choir that address social and environmental issues. He has commissioned over 180 works and, with The Crossing, has 28 recordings, with two Grammy Awards and seven nominations. Donald has served as chorus master at the Lyric Opera of Chicago, Welsh National Opera, Opera Philadelphia, and the Spoleto Festival in Italy. Recent projects have taken him to Stockholm, London, Osaka, Cleveland, Boston, Edmonton, Houston, Helsinki, Haarlem, Riga, Los Angeles, and New York. His 72-chapter pandemic-time series Rising w/ The Crossing, has been featured in The Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, The Washington Post, and NPR’s Performance Today; it is archived by The Library of Congress as a cultural artifact of our historical record. The 2022-2023 Season will include collaborations with Carnegie Hall, the New York Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Ventura Festival, November Music in The Netherlands, the Baltic Sea Festival in Sweden, and TBA21 in Spain. Donald is the John W. Beattie Chair of Music and professor of choral studies at Northwestern University.
New Focus Recordings is an artist-led collective label featuring releases in contemporary creative music of many stripes, as well as new approaches to older repertoire. The label was founded by guitarist Dan Lippel, composer Peter Gilbert in 2004, and composer/engineer Ryan Streber in 2004, formed …Read More …
Listen to full streaming tracks while you browse the site. New tracks enabled for streaming every month. Click on the button to open up the radio player.
