Mar. 30, 31: Grammy-Winning Choir The Crossing Performs World Premiere of Thomas Lloyd’s In the Light

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

Grammy-Winning Choir The Crossing Performs
World Premiere of Thomas Lloyd’s In the Light

“[A] gift for lending social activism to poetic form… exploiting the full,
astonishing range of vocal techniques.” – The New York Times

www.crossingchoir.org 
 

PHILADELPHIA, PA (February 26, 2019) — On Saturday, March 30, 2019 at 8:00 p.m. and Sunday, March 31, 2019 at 5:00 p.m. at The Philadelphia Episcopal Cathedral, The Crossing and conductor Donald Nally present the world premiere of Thomas Lloyd’s In the Light, a choral-theater work for 20 voices, clarinet, cello, and piano.

In the Light explores the strange and oppressive culture of a Cape Cod religious community with an internationally recognized choir, examining the desire to belong and the fear of exclusion. This is the second choral-theater work Lloyd has composed for The Crossing; his previous work Bonhoeffer, written for The Crossing, was nominated for a 2017 Grammy Award.

The production features projections, digital audio transitions by Jeremy Lloyd of the band Marian Hill, and an ensemble featuring clarinetist Doris Hall-Gulati, who performed on The Crossing’s 2019 Grammy-winning album Zealot Canticles; cellist Thomas Mesa, who performed on The Crossing’s 2017 Grammy-nominated CD, Thomas Lloyd’s Bonhoeffer; and pianist John Grecia, who has performed with The Crossing for eleven years.

Of the world premiere, Lloyd says, “I've always been fascinated by how people let themselves come under the influence of the centrifugal energy of a community under the sway of a charismatic leader. Finding such a situation in a religious community with a choir and its director at the center presented a compelling opportunity to probe this question by bringing such a choir to life theatrically.

I was already familiar with the recordings of the Gloriae Dei Cantores choir and choral music published by Paraclete Press, but when I looked into the religious community in which these were based, the Community of Jesus in Orleans, MA, I came across journalistic and legal accounts of coercive practices and abuse. With choral music and Christian liturgy being at the center of my own life's work, it confirmed for me that such social pathology is not just something that can easily be dismissed, but gets to the heart of what it means to lead and what it means to follow within groups in our society, both locally and nationally. When do we cross the line from productive to dysfunctional, from life-affirming to malevolent? Can individuals survive such an experience and come out the other side with some sense of self remaining?”

Program Information
Saturday, March 30, 2019 at 8:00 p.m.
Sunday, March 31, 2019 at 5:00 p.m.
Philadelphia Episcopal Cathedral | 23 South 38th Street | Philadelphia, PA 19104
Tickets: $35 General Admission, $25 Seniors, $20 Students
Link: www.crossingchoir.org

Program:
Thomas Lloyd: In the Light (World Premiere)

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, 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.

*Photo of The Crossing above by Christian Stewart

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