Grammy-Winning Choir The Crossing Performs Concert Honoring Choral Conductor Joseph Flummerfelt

Grammy-winning new-music choir, The Crossing, announces a program change to its current concert season with For Joe on Saturday, March 30, 2019 at 8pm at The Crossing's home, The Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill. For Joe honors the life of Joseph Flummerfelt, the preeminent choral conductor of our time who passed away on March 1. Flummerfelt was a former teacher of conductor Donald Nally and together they wrote the 2011 book Conversations With Joseph Flummerfelt: Thoughts on Conducting, Music, and Musicians.

Not a memorial, nor a celebration, For Joe will serve as a musical picture book with works of Gavin Bryars, Herbert Howells, Eriks Esenvalds, and Michael Gilbertson, among others. The Crossing also presents the world premiere of a work by Robert Convery, written in memory of Joe. Joining The Crossing will be clarinetist Doris Hall-Gulati and cellist Arlen Hlusko; The Crossing's keyboardist, John Grecia, will also be featured.

The program scheduled to be premiered on the weekend of March 30-31, Thomas Lloyd's In the Light, has been postponed to a future date. All ticket buyers will have their tickets refunded automatically.

Of the schedule change Donald Nally says, "With the passing of Joe Flummerfelt, a huge figure in my and many of The Crossing singers' lives, and after much thought and consideration, we have decided that the best way that we can perform at the end of March is to do a concert in his memory and postpone In The Light to a future season when we can properly concentrate on it."

Read The New York Times Obituary of Joseph Flummerfelt: https://nyti.ms/2u4em7O

Performance Information
For Joe
Saturday, March 30, 2019 at 8pm
The Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill | 8855 Germantown Ave | Philadelphia, PA
Tickets: $35 General Admission, $25 Seniors, $20 Students
Link: https://thecrossing.ticketleap.com/for-joe/dates/Mar-30-2019_at_0800PM

Performers:
The Crossing
Donald Nally, conductor
John Grecia, keyboards
Doris Hall-Gulati, clarinet
Arlen Hlusko, cello

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 over seventy commissioned premieres address social, environmental, and political issues.

Highly sought after for collaborative projects, The Crossing's first collaboration was as the resident choir of the Spoleto Festival, Italy, in 2007. The Crossing has appeared at Miller Theatre of Columbia University with the International Contemporary Ensemble, with whom they have appeared at the Mostly Mozart Festival at Lincoln Center. They joined Bang on a Can for its first Philadelphia Marathon; and have sung with the LA Philharmonic, the American Composers Orchestra, Network for New Music, Lyric Fest, Piffaro, Tempesta di Mare Baroque Chamber Orchestra, PRISM Saxophone Quartet, Toshimaru Nakamura, Beth Morrison Projects, Dolce Suono, Allora & Calzadilla, Pig Iron Theatre Company and The Rolling Stones. Venues include National Sawdust, Disney Hall in Los Angeles, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, The Kennedy Center in Washington, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall, Northwestern University, Colgate University, and the Winter Garden in New York with WNYC. In 2014 they premiered John Luther Adams' Sila: the breath of the world at Lincoln Center. The Crossing holds an annual residency at the Warren Miller Performing Arts Center in Big Sky, Montana where they are working on an extensive, multi-year project with composer Michael Gordon and filmmaker Bill Morrison. Their concerts are broadcast regularly on WRTI, 90.1 FM, Philadelphia's Classical and Jazz Public Radio. In the 2018-19 season they made their debut at the New York Philharmonic, Park Avenue Armory, and Peak Performances at Montclair State University.

The Crossing has presented over seventy commissioned world premieres. Major new works have included Michael Gordon's Anonymous Man (2017), Michael Gilbertson's Born (2017), Anna Thorvaldsdottir's Ad genua (2016), Lansing McLoskey's Zealot Canticles (2017), Caroline Shaw's To the Hands (2016), John Luther Adams' Canticles of the Holy Wind (2013, co-commissioned with Kamer), Gavin Bryars' The Fifth Century (2014, written for The Crossing and PRISM), Stratis Minakakis' Crossings Cycle (2015/2017), Gregory Brown's un/bodying/s (2017), David Lang's statement to the court (2010), Lewis Spratlan's Hesperus is Phosphorus (2012, co-commissioned with Network for New Music), Ted Hearne's Sound From the Bench (2014, co-commissioned with Volti) and, from Kile Smith, The Arc in the Sky (2018), The Consolation of Apollo (2014), The Waking Sun (2011), and Vespers (2008, a commission of Piffaro). In 2016, The Crossing presented Seven Responses with new works including those of David T. Little, Hans Thomalla, Pelle Gudmundsen-Holmgreen, and Santa Ratniece. That same year, The Crossing commissioned and presented Jeff Quartets, a rare compilation of quartets from fifteen of the world's leading composers, presented as a concert-length set and collected in an omnibus edition. In June 2019, The Crossing will present its largest project to date - Aniara: fragments of time and space, a collaboration with Klockriketeatern in Helsinki, and composer Robert Maggio. Future projects include composers Julia Wolfe, Toivo Tulev, Edie Hill, Daniel Felsenfeld, Gregory Spears, Tawnie Olson, James Primosch, Stacy Garrop, Jacob Cooper, and Aaron Helgeson.

With a commitment to recording their commissions, The Crossing has fifteen commercially-released recordings, two Grammy Awards and three nominations. Their collaboration with PRISM, Gavin Bryars' The Fifth Century (ECM, October 2016), was the winner of the 2018 Grammy Award for Best Choral Performance and named one of The Chicago Tribune's Top 10 Classical CDs of the 2016. Lansing McLoskey's Zealot Canticles won the 2019 Grammy and Thomas Lloyd's Bonhoeffer (Albany 2016) was nominated for the 2017 Grammy, both as Best Choral Performance.

The Crossing, with Donald Nally, was the American Composers Forums' 2017 Champion of New Music. The Crossing's 2014 commission Sound from The Bench by Ted Hearne was named a 2018 Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Music. They were 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.

About Donald Nally
Donald Nally is responsible for imagining, programming, commissioning, and conducting at The Crossing. He is also the director of choral organizations at Northwestern University where he holds the John W. Beattie Chair of Music. Donald has served as chorus master at the Lyric Opera of Chicago, Welsh National Opera, Opera Philadelphia, and for many seasons at the Spoleto Festival in Italy. He has also served as music director of Cincinnati's Vocal Arts Ensemble, chorus master at The Chicago Bach Project, and guest conductor throughout Europe and the United States, most notably with the Grant Park Symphony Chorus, the Philharmonia Chorus (London), the Santa Fe Desert Chorale, and the Latvian State Choir (Riga).

With The Crossing, Donald has commissioned nearly eighty works and produced fifteen recordings, with two Grammy Awards and three nominations. Donald, with The Crossing, was the American Composers Forum 2017 Champion of New Music; he received the 2017 Michael Korn Founders Award from Chorus America. He is the only conductor to have two ensembles receive the Margaret Hillis Award for Excellence in Choral Music: in 2002 with the Choral Arts Society of Philadelphia and in 2015 with The Crossing. Collaborations have included the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Lincoln Center, Mostly Mozart, the Cleveland Museum of Art, Carnegie Hall, National Sawdust, the Barnes Foundation, Boston's Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), the American Composers Orchestra, and The Big Sky Conservatory in Montana where The Crossing holds an annual residency.

In addition to his work with The Crossing, Donald has recently been visiting resident artist at the Park Avenue Armory, music director of David Lang's 1000-voice Mile Long Opera on the High Line in Manhattan, and chorus master for the New York Philharmonic for world premieres of Julia Wolfe and David Lang. He has worked closely with Lang and Allora & Calzadilla on projects in Osaka, London, Edmonton, Cleveland, and Philadelphia. He is the winner of two Grammy Awards for Best Choral Performance (2018 and 2019).

*Photo of The Crossing above by Christian Stewart

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