Jan. 24-26: The Crossing Makes NY Phil Debut in World Premiere Performances of Julia Wolfe's Fire in my mouth

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Katy Salomon | Morahan Arts and Media
katy@morahanartsandmedia.com | 863.660.2214

 
The Crossing Gives World Premiere Performances of Julia Wolfe’s
Fire in my mouth in New York Philharmonic Debut – January 24, 25, and 26

Immersive Visual and Musical Work Based on 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire,
Performed with the Young People’s Chorus of New York City
 

New York, NY (December 12, 2018) — Winner of the 2018 Grammy Award for Best Choral Performance, The Crossing makes its New York Philharmonic debut in world premiere performances of Julia Wolfe’s Fire in my mouth on Thursday, January 24, 2019 at 7:30 p.m., Friday, January 25, 2019 at 8:00 p.m., and Saturday, January 26, 2019 at 8:00 p.m. at David Geffen Hall at Lincoln Center.

Led by New York Philharmonic Music Director Jaap van Zweden, Julia Wolfe’s immersive Fire in my mouth — featuring video, theatrical lighting, and nearly 150 women vocalists — explores the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire in New York City which killed 146 garment workers, most of them young, female immigrants. The tragic decisions that led to the devastation instigated protests that led to changes in labor laws. Thirty-six women of The Crossing and conductor Donald Nally will be joined by 110 women of the Young People’s Chorus of New York City, led by director Francisco J. Núñez. Fire in my mouth features video and scenic design by Jeff Sugg and is directed by Anne Kauffman.

Of the piece, Julia Wolfe says, “I had been thinking about immigrant women in the workforce at the turn of the century. They fled their homelands to escape poverty and persecution. The garment workers arrived to these shores with sewing skills. Many of the women wound up working on these huge factory floors—hundreds of women sitting at sewing machines. Fire in my mouth tells the story of these women who persevered and endured challenging conditions, women who led the fight for reform in the workplace. I am thrilled to work with Jaap van Zweden and the huge incredible force of the New York Philharmonic to bring Fire in my mouth to life.”

The performances are part of New York Stories: Threads of Our City, the New York Philharmonic’s exploration of musical expressions of the immigrant experience, and will be paired with Steven Stucky’s Elegy from August 4, 1964 and Copland’s Clarinet Concerto featuring New York Philharmonic Principal Clarinet Anthony McGill.

Program Information

Fire in my mouth 
Thursday, January 24, 2019 at 7:30 p.m.
Friday, January 25, 2019 at 8:00 p.m.
Saturday, January 26, 2019 at 8:00 p.m.
David Geffen Hall | 10 Lincoln Center Plaza | New York, NY
Tickets: $33-120 at nyphil.org or by calling (212) 875-5656.
Link: https://nyphil.org/concerts-tickets/1819/fire-in-my-mouth

Performers:
New York Philharmonic
Jaap van Zweden, conductor
Anthony McGill, clarinet
The Crossing (Donald Nally, conductor)
Young People’s Chorus of New York City (Francisco J. Núñez, director)
Jeff Sugg, video and scenic designer
Anne Kauffman, director

Program:
Stucky: Elegy from August 4, 1964
Copland: Clarinet Concerto
     Anthony McGill, clarinet
Julia Wolfe: Fire in my mouth [World Premiere*]
     The Crossing led by Donald Nally
     Young People’s Chorus of New York City led by Francisco J. Núñez

*Fire in my mouth is a New York Philharmonic Co-Commission with Cal Performances at the University of California, Berkeley; the Krannert Center at the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign; and the University Musical Society at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

____________________________________________________________________________

About Julia Wolfe
Julia Wolfe draws inspiration from folk, classical, and rock genres, bringing a modern sensibility to each while simultaneously tearing down the walls between them.

Her Pulitzer prize-winning concert-length oratorio, Anthracite Fields for chorus and instruments, draws on oral histories, interviews, speeches, and more to honor the people who persevered and endured in the Pennsylvania Anthracite Coal Region. Other recent projects include her evening-length Steel Hammer for the Bang on a Can All-Stars and singers which toured in an expanded theatrical form with director Anne Bogart and her SITI Company. In January 2019, the New York Philharmonic premieres Fire in my mouth, Wolfe's large-scale work for orchestra and women's chorus, continuing her interest in American labor history with the subject of women in New York's garment industry at the turn of the century. Upcoming projects include new works for SO Percussion, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and the New World Symphony.

Wolfe’s music is distinguished by an intense physicality and a relentless power that pushes performers to extremes and demands attention from the audience. She has written a major body of work for strings, from quartets to full orchestra. Her music has been heard at venues throughout the world and has been recorded on the Cantaloupe Music, Teldec, Point/Universal, Sony Classical, and Argo/Decca labels.

Wolfe is a 2016 MacArthur Fellow and was a recipient of a 2015 Herb Alpert Award in Music. She is on faculty at the NYU Steinhardt School and is co-founder/co-artistic director of New York’s legendary music collective Bang on a Can. Her music is published by Red Poppy, Ltd. (ASCAP) and is distributed worldwide by G. Schirmer, Inc.

About The Crossing
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 will make 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 include 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. 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. Their recording of Thomas Lloyd’s Bonhoeffer (Albany 2016) was nominated for the 2017 GRAMMY as Best Choral Performance. Additional recordings have been released on Innova, Cantaloupe, and Navona Records.

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).

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 the 2017-18 season, he collaborates as guest director with Lisson Gallery (London), The Cathedral Choral Society (Washington, D.C.), Haymarket Opera (Chicago), David Lang’s The Mile Long Opera (on the High Line in New York City), and is visiting resident artist at the Park Avenue Armory.

*Image at top of release by Becky Oehlers

# # #