The Crossing Releases 30th Album: Shara Nova's Titration, Out Today on Navona Records

Today, acclaimed Grammy Award-winning choir The Crossing, led by Donald Nally, releases its 30th album Titration, on Navona Records. Premiered at the Warren Miller Performing Arts Center in Big Sky, Montana in August 2022, Titration is another creative collaboration between The Crossing and Shara Nova, founder of the chamber pop band My Brightest Diamond and one of the featured composers on the choir's most recent album, Carols After a Plague.

Commissioned by The Crossing, Titration was performed shortly after its premiere at NPR's Tiny Desk Concert and in February, The Crossing recently performed the single "Imagine a Favorite Place" from Titration at the national conference of The American Choral Directors Association in Cincinnati.

"As a child," Shara Nova said, "I often understood the best way to deal with big feelings was to go silently into my bedroom and remain there until I could come out with a 'better attitude.' The story of my learning how to identify feelings and stay connected to my body is ongoing. The details of what has happened to me personally to make emotion and body awareness difficult were not necessary to tell. Instead I wanted to share some explorations in asking the question, 'How do I keep on feeling in this mean, mean world?'"

The term "titration" in chemistry describes a process in which two reagents are mixed together slowly, drop by drop, to avoid an explosive reaction that would result from quickly pouring them together. The same term is used in therapy to describe a process in which one approaches trauma very slowly, avoiding unnecessary distress, flooding, or potential re-traumatization.

Titration examines the experience of our own bodies, the capacity of our nervous systems, and the quest to identify and embrace our most difficult feelings. Styles converge, warm sounds emerge and voices soar next to laughter, humming, and the energy of Shara's Indie band roots, with songs deeply inspired by Resmaa Menakem's Somatic Abolitionist body of work and his call for communal practice. Titration offers a glimpse into various healing modalities while extending a hand of self-awareness to listeners alike.

This release of The Crossing's 30th album comes as the ensemble celebrates its third Grammy Award for Best Choral Performance, and a tour (with movements of Titration) that included performances at the Neubauer Collegium at the University of Chicago, Ithaca and Dartmouth Colleges.

Born in "The Diamond state" of Arkansas to a family of musical traveling evangelists, Shara Nova (formerly Worden) moved across America throughout her youth, then went on to study classical voice at The University of North Texas. After moving to New York City, she assembled her chamber pop band, My Brightest Diamond in 2001, subsequently releasing four albums on Asthmatic Kitty Records and in 2018 A Million And One, a dance pop tribute to Detroit where she currently lives. Nova has composed works for yMusic, Brooklyn Youth Chorus, Cantus Domus, The Crossing, Nordic Voices, Young New Yorkers' Chorus, Brooklyn Rider, Nadia Sirota and Roomful of Teeth, among others. In 2019, she composed an "opera for a city" with director Mark DeChiazza and over 600 musicians along with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, entitled "Look Around."

Her orchestrations have been performed by the Aarhus Symfoni, North Carolina Symphony, Indianapolis Symphony, American Composers Orchestra and the BBC Concert orchestra. Her baroque chamber p'opera "You Us We All" premiered in the US in October 2015 at BAM Next Wave Festival. She wrote and performed in a four-screen installation created with Helga Davis and Mark DeChiazza entitled "Ocean Body", which was showcased by ProtoTYPE festival in January 2021, premiered at The Momentary in August and is showing at Wasserman Gallery in Detroit through December 2021. Her latest operatic work, a baroque masque entitled "Infinite Movement" created in collaboration with visual artist Matthew Ritchie, premiered at The University of North Texas in November 2021 performed by double choir, double brass ensembles and featured soloists.

Many composers, songwriters and filmmakers have sought out Nova's voice, including Sarah Kirkland Snider, David Lang, David Byrne, The Decemberists, Bryce Dessner, Steve Mackey, Sufjan Stevens, Matthew Ritchie, Laurie Anderson and Matthew Barney. Nova is a Kresge fellow, a Carolina Performing Arts Creative Futures fellow, a National Endowment for the Arts recipient, a Knights Grant recipient and a United States Artists fellow.

To see Shara in concert, see the latest updates on www.mybrightestdiamond.com or to peek at scores, visit www.shara-nova.com.

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 160 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.

Navona Records is a PARMA Recordings Company. PARMA Recordings is a leading figure in the commercial production and curated promotion of sounds by today's musicians. Since 2008, PARMA's GRAMMY-winning team has produced over 900 commercial releases, with works ranging from Billboard-topping classical chamber music to Cuban jazz to experimental electronic works. Music from their distributed labels has been featured in settings from CBS to Carnegie Hall, Microsoft to the Musikverein, and Nintendo to National Geographic. The 2019 Navona Records release from The Crossing THE ARC IN THE SKY was nominated for a 2020 GRAMMY Award; the 2020 Navona Records release CARTHAGE was nominated for a 2021 GRAMMY Award; and the 2022 Navona Records release BORN won a 2023 GRAMMY Award.

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