All material found in the Press Releases section is provided by parties entirely independent of Musical America, which is not responsible for content.
Press Releases
The Crossing Announces Major New Commission from Caroline Shaw, Made Possible by The Ann Stookey Fund for New Music
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Katy Salomon | Morahan Arts and Media
katy@morahanartsandmedia.com | 863.660.2214
The Crossing Announces Major New Commission from Pulitzer Laureate
Caroline Shaw, Made Possible by The Ann Stookey Fund for New Music
Shaw to Write Work for a Consortium of Choirs Composed of The Crossing (Philadelphia),
Cantori New York (New York), Volti (San Francisco), and Notre Dame Vocale (South Bend)
New York, NY (February 4, 2019) — Grammy-winning choir The Crossing, led by conductor Donald Nally, today announces a major new commission from Pulitzer Laureate Caroline Shaw, made possible by the Ann Stookey Fund for New Music (ASFNM). The ASFNM grant of $30,000 will underwrite the commissioning of a new work by Shaw, winner of the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for her work Partita for Eight Voices. The Crossing’s previous premiere with Caroline, To the Hands, from Seven Responses (2016), has become its most widely-performed commission.
The new work is commissioned by a consortium of choirs composed of The Crossing (Philadelphia), Cantori New York (New York), Volti (San Francisco), and Notre Dame Vocale (South Bend); all will give the regional premieres of the new work, intended for the 2021-2022 season.
Composer, violinist, and singer Caroline Shaw is the youngest recipient of the Pulitzer Prize in Music. She appears regularly as a vocalist with Roomful of Teeth and as a violinist with the American Contemporary Music Ensemble. Her works have been performed by The Crossing, the Baltimore Symphony, Roomful of Teeth, So Percussion, the Brentano String Quartet, and many other leading ensembles. She has also co-produced and contributed vocals to several Kanye West tracks.
“We are delighted to work with a consortium of highly regarded, leading edge choral organizations to identify the next generation of great choral composers and to support efforts to bring their work to audiences,” said Joe Waz, chair of the Ann Stookey Fund for New Music. “With this latest commission to Caroline Shaw, who has been hailed for her ‘exquisite, distinctive (compositional) voice’, the Fund is pleased to help expand the choral arts in Ann’s memory.”
Donald Nally, conductor of The Crossing, commented, “I had an amazing conversation with Caroline about the direction of this project and feel that she knows us so well, having worked together intimately a couple of years back. We share similar interests in why art “is” and I know that the consortium ensembles all have these directions, concerns, abilities, and commitment. We are, of course, ever grateful to Joe Waz and the Ann Stookey Fund for New Music for another new-music gift to the world – one that will surely honor Ann’s legacy.”
The commission was proposed by members of the Fund’s advisory board and chosen by the board of ASFNM (http://annstookeyfund.org/
The Ann Stookey Fund for New Music was established in celebration of the life of Ann Stookey, an avid choral singer and strong supporter of new music, who passed away in 2012. A number of works commissioned by the Fund have received their world premieres. Learn more at http://annstookeyfund.org/our-
The announcement comes following the weekend of Ann Stookey’s birthday, February 2.
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 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. 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 2016. Their recording of Thomas Lloyd’s Bonhoeffer (Albany 2016) was nominated for the 2017 GRAMMY as Best Choral Performance, and their 2018 recording of Lansing McLoskey’s Zealot Canticles (Innova) is nominated for a 2019 Grammy Award. 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
# # #
FEATURED JOBS
RENT A PHOTO
