The Crossing to Open Season With RETURNING, Featuring Music By Woods, Gilbertson, Ešenvalds And Primosch

Grammy Award-winning choir The Crossing, led by conductor Donald Nally, opens its 2021-2022 season with Returning on Saturday, September 11, 2021 at 7:00pm at their home, The Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill. On the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks, The Crossing will perform signature works of the recent past: Ayanna Woods' SHIFT, Michael Gilbertson's Returning, ?'riks Ešenvalds' Earth Teach Me Quiet with percussionist Ted Babcock, "Gloria" and "Agnus Dei" from James Primosch's Mass for the Day of St. Thomas Didymus, and John Tavener's Funeral Ikos. Donald Nally will lead a pre-concert talk in the Burleigh Cruikshank Memorial Chapel and a homecoming gathering at Widener Hall immediately follows the program.

Nally says, "Returning is a celebration of works we love, sung with artists and for people we love, marking a time of isolation, grief, confusion, hope, and returning."

The Crossing premiered Ayanna Woods' Shift digitally with film on November 2, 2020, the day before the general election. Subsequently, the expanded version premiered at The Crossing's Month of Moderns in June 2021 and its residency at the Warren Miller Performing Arts Center in Big Sky Montana this month. Woods has written the words for this bold new piece in which she contemplates the reimagining of our monuments, building through layers to its climactic arrival, "bursting through the cracks in the story you tell, America." Watch the Shift film, part of The Crossing's 2020 Election Films series.

Michael Gilbertson's 20-minute Returning is loosely based on the biblical story of Jonathan and David; exploring what draws one human to another. It reflects The Crossing's season theme: return / emerge / remember. Earth Teach Me Quiet by ?'riks Ešenvalds is featured on the ensemble's critically acclaimed live album Rising w/ The Crossing (New Focus 2020), named NPR's December 2020 album of the month, and the track was named one of The New York Times' 25 Best Classical Tracks of 2020.

The program continues with two movements, "Gloria" and "Agnus Dei" from James Primosch's Mass for the Day of St. Thomas Didymus, which was written for The Crossing in 2014, featured on the ensemble's 2020 album CARTHAGE (Parma), and nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Choral Recording. Finally, Funeral Ikos by John Tavener, a work that reaches back to the ensemble's beginnings and their residency at the Spoleto Festival in Italy in 2007, remembers those we have lost.

Program Information
Returning
Saturday, September 11, 2021 at 7:00pm
The Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill | 8855 Germantown Ave | Philadelphia, PA 19118
Tickets: General Admission $35, Seniors $25, Students $20
Link: https://www.crossingchoir.org/events/2021-22/returning

Program:
AYANNA WOODS: SHIFT
MICHAEL GILBERTSON: Returning
?'RIKS EŠENVALDS: Earth Teach Me Quiet
JAMES PRIMOSCH: Mass for the Day of St. Thomas Didymus: Gloria and Agnus Dei
JOHN TAVENER: Funeral Ikos

The Crossing
Donald Nally, conductor
Ted Babcock, percussion

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