Cloud AnthemThe Crossing & Donald Nally, conductor

Donald Nally

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.

The Crossing

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.

Michael Gilbertson

The works of Michael Gilbertson have been described as “elegant” and “particularly beautiful” by the New York Times, “vivid, tightly woven” and “delectably subtle” by the Baltimore Sun, “genuinely moving” by the Washington Post, and “a compelling fusion of new and ancient” by the Philadelphia Inquirer. Gilbertson is the BMI Composer in Residence with the San Francisco Chamber Orchestra and is a professor at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. He was a finalist for the 2018 Pulitzer Prize in Music for his Quartet. His works have been programmed by the Minnesota Orchestra, Pittsburgh Symphony, Washington National Opera, Albany Symphony, and San Francisco Chamber Orchestra, among many others.