July 3: Caramoor Presents The Crossing in Acclaimed Socially Distanced Experience, The Forest

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

Caramoor Presents Grammy-Winning Choir, The Crossing,
in Acclaimed Socially Distanced Experience, The Forest – July 3

An Intimate Walk Through Caramoor’s Grounds Using 
The Crossing’s ECHOES Amplification Kits

“The melding of voice, words and technology was seamless… [a] clear-cut success on every level,
a piece that’s not a make-do for lack of traditional concerts, but something that couldn’t have been
imagined in other time and is fully realized on a high level.”  – The Philadelphia Inquirer

www.crossingchoir.org 
 

Katonah, NY (May 20, 2021) — On Saturday, July 3, 2021 at 6:00pm, Caramoor presents GRAMMY-winning new-music choir The Crossing, led by Donald Nally, in its unique, socially distant, live performance, The Forest. In a time when choirs cannot sing and perform together in conventional ways, The Forest features the 24 singers of The Crossing, situated in the sounds and sights of the Caramoor grounds, while audience members walk, socially distanced, through the soundscape and landscape. It focuses on the symbiotic relationship between individual trees and the forest – a metaphor for the relationship between each singer and the ensemble. The libretto is formed from The Crossing singers’ reflections on their isolation during COVID-time, overlaid with texts from Scott Russell Sanders’ essay Mind in the Forest. The music was composed by conductor Donald Nally and assistant conductor Kevin Vondrak.

Nally says, “Caramoor is an oasis of discovered vistas and stunning surprises as you turn each corner of The Forest's path; the singers of The Crossing merge with the trees, plants, and sprawling lawns of this iconic estate in an organic way that allows the words of our pandemic experience to appear to emerge from the earth and hang in the branches above. It is a perfect marriage of music, ensemble, and venue for our first visit to Caramoor – as memorable for our ensemble as we hope it will be for listeners.”

Under the guidance of in-house sound designer Paul Vazquez, The Crossing developed an amplification system, ECHOES (Ex-Covid Haptotropic Optimistic Electrophonic Sound), to present The Forest in accordance with social distancing guidelines. Each ECHOES kit allows singers to stand and safely sing 30 feet from each other and from the audience while listeners walk along a well-worn, mostly flat path of approximately .75 mile lined with speakers. Though the work captures the isolation of singers during the pandemic, ECHOES paradoxically allows The Forest to be intimate and personal. The 30-minute, intimate experience attempts to reestablish those currently-broken relationships between singers and audience members, and tells The Crossing’s story – a story of a planet in crisis, its people and its forests in peril, and yet, in that curiously human way, a story of hope and a way forward. Watch the world premiere of The Forest and read the libretto.

Performance Information
Caramoor Presents The Crossing in The Forest
Saturday, July 3, 2021 at 6:00pm
Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts | 149 Girdle Ridge Rd | Katonah, NY
Tickets: $55
Link: https://caramoor.org/event/the-forest-summer-2021/ 

Program:
Donald Nally and Kevin Vondrak – The Forest (2020)

Note: The Forest experience is available by reservation only, entering at timed intervals between 6:00pm-6:45pm. Timed entry requires audience members to arrive 10 minutes prior to the entry time. Upon arrival, staff will check-in, and the audience will queue for staggered entry into the piece. In order to maintain safe distancing, late arrivals cannot be guaranteed entry. Audience members should be prepared to walk about 0.75 miles in total. The path through Caramoor’s grounds consists of uneven terrain, including grass, packed dirt, cedar chips, and paved areas. With listening, stopping, and exploring, audiences can expect it to take about 30 minutes to experience The Forest.

About The Crossing
The Crossing is a GRAMMY® Award-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 nearly 120 commissioned premieres address 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, Klockriketeatern, and the International Contemporary Ensemble. Similarly, The Crossing often collaborates with some of world’s most prestigious venues and presenters, such as the Park Avenue Armory, Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts at the University of Pennsylvania, National Sawdust, David Geffen Hall at Lincoln Center, Disney Hall in Los Angeles, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Menil Collection in Houston, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, Haarlem Choral Biennale in The Netherlands, The Finnish National Opera in Helsinki, The Kennedy Center in Washington, Philadelphia Museum of Art, 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. 

With a commitment to recording its commissions, The Crossing has issued 24 releases, receiving two GRAMMY® Awards for Best Choral Performance (2018, 2019), and six GRAMMY nominations. The Crossing, with Donald Nally, was the American Composers Forum’s 2017 Champion of New Music. They were the recipients of 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 has expanded its choral presentation to film, working 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 were specifically created to be within the restrictions imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic. The Crossing’s pandemic response daily series, Rising w/ The Crossing, a series of 72 past live performances with notes by Donald Nally, has been archived by the Library of Congress as “an important part of the collection and the historical record.”

The Crossing is represented by Alliance Artist Management. All of its concerts are broadcast on WRTI, Philadelphia’s Classical and Jazz public radio station. Learn more at www.crossingchoir.org.  

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*Photo Credit: John C. Hawthorne