Alvin M. Keeling 
Grammy Award-winning choir The Crossing, conducted by Donald Nally, presents its annual summer festival of new music, The Month of Moderns 2022, with three concerts on June 11, June 25 and July 8, 2022 at the church Chestnut Hill Presbyterian in Philadelphia.
The Crossing will feature the world premieres of Book of Colors by Marcos Balter and The Book of Never by Aaron Helgeson on June 11, 2022; the world premiere of Beloved of the Sky by Tawnie Olson and the US premiere of Unhistoric Acts by Chaya Czernowin, joined by the famous JACK Quartet on June 25, 2022; and the world premiere of Sumptuous Planet: A Secular Mass by David Shapiro, with lyrics by Richard Dawkins on July 8, 2022.
Modernism Month 2022 kicks off with The Books of Color and of Never on Saturday, June 11, 2022 at 7:00 p.m. at Chestnut Hill Presbyterian Church. On the program, world premieres by Marcos Balter and Aaron Helgeson. A pre-concert talk with Donald Nally and the composers will take place at 6:00 p.m. in the Burleigh Cruikshank Memorial Chapel.
The story is rooted deep in the origins of Helgeson’s Book of Never, an adaptation of the Novgorod Codex, a wooden book of psalms from 999 believed to belong to a monk sent to convert the village of Novgorod (in present-day Ukraine) of paganism. to Orthodox Christianity. After his excommunication, the monk focused on preserving the village’s history by writing and overwriting many layers in the Codex, a technique Helgeson mastered musically by layering these ancient Novgorod texts with 20th-century writers. Wilde, Neruda, Stein, Angela Davis, and Thanha Lai. The Book of Never was commissioned by the Barlow Endowment for Music Composition at Brigham Young University. Drawing on his signature rhythmic energy and ingenuity, Balter’s work uses Jude Stewart’s book, ROY G BIV, as a jumping-off point for an exploration of color in our lives; how it uplifts us, changes us, connects and inspires reflection.
The festival continues with Unhistoric Acts on Saturday, June 25, 2022 at 5:00 p.m., also at Chestnut Hill Presbyterian Church, with the world premiere of Beloved of the Sky by Tawnie Olson and the U.S. premiere of Unhistoric Acts by Chaya Czernowin, joined by the famous JACK Quartet. A pre-concert talk with Donald Nally and the composers will take place at 4:00 p.m. in the Burleigh Cruikshank Memorial Chapel.
Continuing the exploration of color from The Books of Color and Never, Beloved of the Sky is inspired by the diaries of Canadian artist Emily Carr, a set of highly concentrated cameos by the lonely and eccentric artist who wrote words to affirm its value in the face of suffering and incomprehension. Olson translates Carr’s ideas into musical vignettes, where words and paint seem to intertwine. Beloved of the Sky is commissioned for The Crossing, Seraphic Fire and Brigham Young University by the Barlow Endowment for Music Composition at Brigham Young University. JACK Quartet joins The Crossing for Unhistoric Acts, Czernowin’s titanic synthesis of disparate quotes from the pandemic. In Czernowin’s bold musical hits, we hear worlds of outrage, fear, intimacy and defiance as she draws on George Eliott’s aphorism, “For the increasing good of the world depends in part non-historical acts”.
Closing the Mois des Modernes 2022 on Friday, July 8, 2022 at 7:00 p.m. is The Book of Dawkins Songs. Held at Chestnut Hill Presbyterian Church, the evening features the world premiere of Sumptuous Planet: A Secular Mass by David Shapiro, an expression of belief in the nature of life and the joy of understanding it, centered on texts by the famous biologist Richard Dawkins. A pre-concert talk with Donald Nally and David Shaphiro will take place at 4:00 p.m. in the Burleigh Cruikshank Memorial Chapel.
Told through Dawkins’ decidedly secular worldview, Sumptuous Planet: A Secular Mass is paradoxically organized by Shapiro in the form of a Christian mass. to our presence. Shapiro’s musical world is one of anticipation and question – there is always another dimension that we are invited to consider, to expect, to seek.
Performance Information
Modern Month 2022
Month of the Moderns 1: Books of Color and Never
Saturday June 11, 2022 at 7:00 p.m.
Pre-concert talk at 6:00 p.m. in the Burleigh Cruikshank Memorial Chapel
Post-concert reception on the church lawn
Chestnut Hill Presbyterian Church | 8855 Germantown Ave | Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19118
Tickets: $35 General Admission, $25 Senior, $20 Student
Link: https://www.crossingchoir.org/events/2021-22/mom1
Program:
Marcos Balter: Color Book [World Premiere]
Aaron Helgeson: The Book of Never [World Premiere]
Month of the Moderns 2: Non-historical acts
Saturday June 25, 2022 at 5 p.m.
Pre-concert talk at 4:00 p.m. in the Burleigh Cruikshank Memorial Chapel
Post-concert reception on the church lawn
Chestnut Hill Presbyterian Church | 8855 Germantown Ave | Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19118
Tickets: $35 General Admission, $25 Senior, $20 Student
Link: https://www.crossingchoir.org/events/2021-22/mom2
Program:
Chaya Czernowin: Unhistorical Acts [US Premiere]
with JACK Quartet
Tawnie Olson: Beloved of Heaven [World Premiere]
Modern Month 3: The Dawkins Songbook
Friday July 8, 2022 at 7:00 p.m.
Pre-concert talk at 6:00 p.m. in the Burleigh Cruikshank Memorial Chapel
Post-concert reception on the church lawn
Chestnut Hill Presbyterian Church | 8855 Germantown Ave | Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19118
Tickets: $35 General Admission, $25 Senior, $20 Student
Link: https://www.crossingchoir.org/events/2021-22/mom3
Program:
David Shapiro: Sumptuous Planet: A Secular Mass [World Premiere]
on texts by Richard Dawkins
Proof of vaccination and wearing of masks indoors are required to attend Modern Month 2022.
About the crossing
The Crossing is a Grammy Award-winning professional chamber choir directed by Donald Nally and dedicated to new music. He is committed to working with creative teams to create and record substantial new choral works that explore and expand the ways of writing for choir, singing in choir and listening to choir music. Many of his first 140 or so commissioned deal with 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, Network for New Music, Lyric Fest, Piffaro, Beth Morrison Projects, Allora & Calzadilla, Bang on a Can, Klockriketatern and the International Contemporary Ensemble. Likewise, The Crossing often collaborates with some of the most prestigious venues and presenters in the world, such as the Park Avenue Armory, the Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts at the University of Pennsylvania, the National Sawdust, the David Geffen Hall at the Lincoln Center, the Disney Hall in Los Angeles. , the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Menil Collection in Houston, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, the Haarlem Choral Biennale in the Netherlands, the Finnish National Opera in Helsinki, the Kennedy Center in Washington, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the 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.
Pledged to record commissions, The Crossing has released 24 releases, receiving two GRAMMY Awards for Best Choral Performance (2018, 2019) and seven Grammy nominations. The Crossing, along with Donald Nally, was the American Composers Forum’s 2017 New Music Champion. They received 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 extended its choral presentation to film, in collaboration with Four/Ten Media, in-house sound designer Paul Vazquez of Digital Mission Audio Services, visual artists Brett Snodgrass and Steven Bradshaw, and composers David Lang, Michael Gordon and Paul Fowler on live and animated versions of new and existing works. Lang’s protect yourself from infection and in nature and Paul Fowler’s Obligations, based on a poem by Layli Long Soldier, were created specifically to meet the restrictions imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic. The Crossing’s daily pandemic response series, Rising w/ The Crossing, a series of 72 live performances with liner notes by Nally, has been archived by the Library of Congress as “an important part of the collection and archives historical”.
The Crossing is represented by Alliance Artist Management. All of his concerts are broadcast on WRTI, Philadelphia’s classical and jazz public radio. Learn more at www.crossingchoir.org.
* Illustration at the top of the version by Sasan Pix
