The Crossing, winner of the 2018 Grammy Award for Best Choral Performance, releases its next album, Lansing McLoskey: Zealot Canticles on September 28, 2018 on Innova Recordings. Based on Nigerian Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka's "Twelve Canticles for the Zealot" - a strangely beautiful and terrifying look into the minds of fanatics - Lansing McLoskey's Zealot Canticles is a concert-length choral 'oratorio' for clarinet, string quartet, and 24-voice choir. The work makes virtuosic demands on all the artists, particularly on the clarinetist, here, Philadelphia's Doris Hall-Galuti. The string quartet on the album is comprised of violinists Rebecca Harris and Mandy Wolman, violist Lorenzo Raval, and cellist Arlen Hlusko.
Soyinka's texts and Lansing's responses are universal pleas for peace and tolerance, yet they force us to look into the mirror and recognize the thin line between devotion and intolerance, zealotry and radicalism - themes that dominate the public discourse every day. Zealot Canticles premiered on March 19, 2017 at the Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill in Philadelphia, The Crossing's home venue, and was commissioned by Donald Nally and The Crossing, with generous support from The Barlow Endowment for Music Composition at Brigham Young University, and the University of Miami.
Wole Soyinka (b. 1934) is a Nigerian poet, playwright, novelist, and recipient of the 1986 Nobel Prize for Literature, the first African American recipient of the award. In 1967, Soyinka was arrested and imprisoned for civil defiance after denouncing the suppression of human rights and free speech by the military dictatorship of General Yakubu Gowon, intervening in an attempt to avoid the Nigerian/Biafran civil war, and condemning the genocide of the Igbo people. In the decades following his release, Soyinka has remained an outspoken advocate for human rights. In 2002, Soyinka published a set of poems titled ''Twelve Canticles for the Zealot,'' a strangely beautiful and terrifying look into the mind of fanatics, containing a subtle catalogue of the horrific results, past and present. Throughout the set of canticles, Soyinka makes universal pleas for peace from multiple languages and religious cultures. Seven of these poems form the core of the libretto of Zealot Canticles. Interwoven with these poems are excerpts from Soyinka's book The Man Died, his play Madmen and Specialists, and interviews, lectures, and speeches reflecting on his upbringing in an environment of tolerance, and condemning the current climate of intolerance, bigotry, and violence.
Of the work, McLoskey says, "From the opening poem I couldn't help but reflect upon the parallels between the delirium of the religious fanatic and the delirium of Soyinka himself during hunger fasts. Self-deprivation and hallucinations are not the sole prerogatives of the unjustly imprisoned, after all, but also common among zealots of another sort. Soyinka's own renunciations of self, 'I need nothing...I feel nothing... I desire nothing,' are renunciations and exhortations echoed in ultra-devotees from Buddhist monks and Hindu ascetics to Christian hermits and the Taliban. Is there then not a thin line between extreme devotion - zealotry - and radicalism? And that line is both personal and public. The words of Wole Soyinka are not just generalizations or universal in nature, but specifically about us. Right here, right now."
About Lansing McLoskey
Lansing McLoskey came to the world of composition via a somewhat unorthodox route. The proverbial "Three B's" for him were not Bach, Beethoven and Brahms, but rather The Beatles, Bauhaus and Black Flag. His first experiences at writing music were not exercises in counterpoint, but as the guitarist and songwriter for punk rock bands in San Francisco in the early 1980's. It was actually through these years in the visceral world of punk that he first developed a love for classical music.
McLoskey has been described as "a major talent and a deep thinker with a great ear" by the American Composers Orchestra, "an engaging, gifted composer writing smart, compelling and fascinating music" by Gramophone Magazine, and "a distinctive voice in American music." His music has been performed in 20 countries on six continents, and he has won more than 12 national and international awards, including two awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Aaron Copland House Award, the Robert Avalon International Composition Competition, the Omaha
Symphony International New Music Competition, the Kenneth Davenport National Competition for Orchestral Works, the Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra Composition Competition, and the Charles Ives Center Orchestral Composition Competition. He has been commissioned by the Fromm Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, Meet The Composer, Pew Charitable Trusts, Barlow Endowment, the New
Spectrum Foundation, the International Joint Wind Quintet Project, and numerous ensembles. Professor at the Frost School of Music, he has given masterclasses and presentations at more than thirty schools and festivals, and has been the Composer-in-Residence at many festivals around the country. His music is released on 16 CDs on Albany Records, WergoSchallplatten, Innova, Capstone, Tantara, Beauport Classics, and published by
Theodore Presser, American Composers Press, Mostly Marimba, and Subito Music. He is an avid cyclist, surfer, and skateboarder. www.lansingmcloskey.com
About The Crossing
The Crossing is a professional chamber choir conducted by Donald Nally and dedicated to new music. Consistently recognized in critical reviews, the ensemble regularly collaborates with some of the nation's most accomplished ensembles and creative composers. It is committed to working with creative teams to make and record new, substantial works for choir, most often addressing social issues. Highly sought-after for collaborative projects, The Crossing's first collaboration was as the resident choir of the Spoleto Festival, Italy, in 2007. Regular collaborators include the International Contemporary Ensemble, American Composers Orchestra, Network for New Music, Lyric Fest, Piffaro, PRISM Saxophone Quartet, Toshimaru Nakamura, Beth Morrison Projects, andAllora & Calzadilla. Upcoming collaborations include the National Gallery in Washington, the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, Northwestern University, Harvard University, and the Park Avenue Armory. The Crossing holds an annual residency at the Warren Miller Performing Arts Center in Big Sky, Montana.
The Crossing has presented over sixty commissioned world premieres from some of the world's leading composers, including Michael Gordon, Lansing McLoskey, John Luther Adams, Kile Smith, David Lang, Ted Hearne, Caroline Shaw, David T. Little, Robert Maggio, Gavin Bryars, Thomas Lloyd, and Hans Thomalla. With a commitment to recording their commissions,
The Crossing has thirteen commercially-released recordings, with more due later this year.
Winner of the 2018 Grammy Award for Best Choral Performance, The Crossing, with Donald Nally, is the American Composers Forums' 2017 Champion of New Music. They are the recipient of the 2015 Margaret Hillis Award for Choral Excellence, three ASCAP Awards for Adventurous Programming, as well as the Dale Warland Singers Commission Award (with composer Joel Puckett) from Chorus America. Donald Nally was awarded the 2017 Michael Korn Award and the 2012 Louis Botto Award for Innovative Action and Entrepreneurial Zeal for his work with The Crossing.
Zealot Canticles Track List
I. Renunciation (Preludium) - 3:31
II. Let's start - 3:53
III. Perched on church steeple - 3:49
IV. I intend to be blunt - 3:50
V. I shall ram pebbles in my mouth - 2:22
VI. Armed with book and beard - 3:29
VII. The writing on the wall - 4:23
VIII. I shall place nettles on my tongue - 2:10
IX. Seek havens of peace - 8:05
X. The dog in dogma - 2:13
XI. I am right, you are dead. - 6:03
XII. I shall place werepe on every tongue - 2:24
XIII. I turned to stone - 5:13
XIV. The man dies - 2:03
XV. I'll drop ratsbane on my tongue - 2:52
XVI. The 13th Canticle - 2:59
XVII. Where are all the flowers gone? - 4:24
XVIII. Bi o ti wa - 6:52
XIX. Bi o ti wa l'atete kose... - 2:21
XX. On fire today - 6:17
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