The Crossing to Kick Off 2023-2024 Season With CRICKETS IN OUR BACKYARD in Chestnut Hill

Three-time Grammy Award-winning choir The Crossing, led by conductor Donald Nally, will kick off its 2023-2024 season with Crickets in our Backyard on Saturday, September 16, 2023 at 7:00 p.m. at The Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill.

The concert features the world premiere of Tania León's Singsong, based on the US Poet Laureate Rita Dove's cricket poems and featuring renowned flutist and MacArthur Fellow Claire Chase, a frequent collaborator with conductor Donald Nally. The work is performed alongside a reprisel of Wang Lu's At Which Point, a 2021 commission based on poetry by Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Forrest Gander; in addition to the world premiere of Ayanna Woods' Infinite Body.

Woods-The Crossing's inaugural Resident Composer-has been central to The Crossing's new partnership with the Pennsylvania Girlchoir. The Crossing's partnership will continue with the choir's 2023-2024 Resident Composer, Nina Shekhar, whose new work developed with the Pennsylvania Girlchoir will premiere in spring 2025.

On Monday, September 18, 2023, at 7:30 p.m. The Crossing takes this program to Battell Chapel as part of the choir's residency at Yale University, and then to Paine Hall on Thursday, September 21, 2023, at 7:00 p.m. as part of the choir's residency at Harvard University. At both universities, The Crossing will collaborate with student singers on contemporary works. At Yale they will collaborate with graduate conductors whom Donald Nally will coach, and at Harvard the ensemble will collaborate with undergraduate composers.

Speaking about the project, Donald Nally said, "Claire, Tania, Ayanna, Lu. This is an unbelievable dream come true-a gathering of some of the greatest and most innovative artistic minds of our culture. The singers of The Crossing and I are in awe of these new works, each completely different in style, scope, and content from the other, yet coming together to form a larger story of the world we live in, from from grief and loss, to how we view our bodies through the lens of societal pressure and race, to the stories we tell ourselves about this land before and during the advent of slavery. The topics are serious, but the works are amazingly uplifting."

The following month The Crossing performs another commissioned world premiere: SIN-EATER by David T. Little, with performances on Saturday, October 14, 2023 at 8:00 p.m. and Sunday, October 15, 2023 at 3:00 p.m. and 7:00 p.m. at Penn Live Arts.

Performance Details

Crickets in our Backyard
The Crossing
Donald Nally, conductor
Claire Chase, flute
Saturday, September 16, 2023 at 7:00 p.m.
The Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill | 8855 Germantown Ave | Philadelphia, PA 19118
Link: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/676860677507

Program:
Tania León - Singsong (World Premiere)
Ayanna Woods - Infinite Body (World Premiere commission by The Crossing's 2022-23 Composer in Residence)
Wang Lu - At Which Point

Crickets in our Backyard
The Crossing
Donald Nally, conductor
Claire Chase, flute
Monday, September 18, 2023, at 7:30 p.m.
Battell Chapel at Yale University | 400 College St | New Haven, CT 06511
Link: https://gleeclub.yalecollege.yale.edu/event/crossing

Program:
Tania León - Singsong
Ayanna Woods - Infinite Body
Wang Lu - At Which Point

Crickets in our Backyard
The Crossing
Donald Nally, conductor
Claire Chase, flute
Thursday, September 21, 2023, at 7:30 p.m.
Paine Hall at Harvard University | 3 Oxford St | Cambridge, MA 02138
Link: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/crickets-in-our-backyard-tickets-686648041777?aff=oddtdtcreator

Program:
Tania León - Singsong
Ayanna Woods - Infinite Body
Wang Lu - At Which Point

About 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.

The Crossing collaborates with some of the world's most accomplished ensembles and artists, including the New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, American Composers Orchestra, Lyric Fest, Piffaro, Beth Morrison Projects, Allora & Calzadilla, Bang on a Can, Klockriketeatern, and the International Contemporary Ensemble. Similarly, The Crossing often collaborates with some of the world's most prestigious venues and presenters, such as the Park Avenue Armory, Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts at the University of Pennsylvania, National Sawdust, 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, 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, Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall, Symphony Space in New York, Winter Garden with WNYC, and Duke, Northwestern, Colgate, and Notre Dame Universities. The Crossing holds an annual residency at the Warren Miller Performing Arts Center in Big Sky, Montana.

With a commitment to recording its commissions, The Crossing has released 30 albums, receiving three Grammy Awards for Best Choral Performance (2018, 2019, 2023), and eight Grammy nominations. The Crossing, with Donald Nally, was the American Composers Forum's 2017 Champion of New Music. They were 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.

Recently, The Crossing has expanded its choral presentation to film, working with Four/Ten Media, in-house sound designer Paul Vazquez of Digital Mission Audio Services, visual artists Brett Snodgrass, Eric Southern, and Steven Bradshaw, and composers David Lang, Paul Fowler, and Michael Gordon on live and animated versions of new and existing works. Lang's protect yourself from infection and in nature were specifically designed to be performed within the restrictions imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic, during which The Crossing premiered a number of newly-commissioned works for outdoors by Matana Roberts, Wang Lu, and Ayanna Woods.

The Crossing is represented by Alliance Artist Management. All of its concerts are broadcast on WRTI, Philadelphia's Classical and Jazz public radio station. Learn more at www.crossingchoir.org.

About Claire Chase

Claire Chase, described by The New York Times recently as "the North Star of her instrument's ever-expanding universe," is a musician, interdisciplinary artist, and educator. Passionately dedicated to the creation of new ecosystems for the music of our time, Chase has given the world premieres of hundreds of new works by a new generation of artists, and in 2013 launched the 24-year commissioning project Density 2036. Now in its eleventh year, Density 2036 reimagines the solo flute literature over a quarter-century through commissions, performances, recordings, education and an accessible archive at density2036.org. Chase co-founded the International Contemporary Ensemble in 2001, was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2012, and in 2017 was awarded the Avery Fisher Prize from Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. Chase is currently Professor of the Practice of Music at Harvard University's Department of Music, a Creative Associate at The Juilliard School, and a Collaborative Partner with Esa-Pekka Salonen and the San Francisco Symphony. She was the Debs Creative Chair at Carnegie Hall for the 2022-23 season.

Photo credit: John C. Hawthorne

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