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Press Releases
March 25-27: The Crossing Tours 'In a House Besieged' to Cleveland, Pittsburgh, and Philadelphia
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Katy Salomon | Morahan Arts and Media
katy@morahanartsandmedia.com | 863.660.2214
Grammy-Winning Choir The Crossing
Performs In a House Besieged
Featuring the World Premiere of Stacy Garrop’s
In a House Besieged with Organist Scott Dettra,
Plus Lansing McLoskey’s The Memory of Rain
and Arvo Pärt’s Salve Regina
Friday, March 25, 2022 at 7:30pm
Cleveland Museum of Art | Cleveland, OH
Saturday, March 26, 2022 at 3:00pm
Shadyside Presbyterian Church | Pittsburgh, PA
Sunday, March 27, 2022 at 7:00pm
St. Mark’s Church | Philadelphia, PA
“America’s most astonishing choir” – The New York Times
PHILADELPHIA, PA (February 23, 2022) — Grammy Award-winning choir The Crossing, led by conductor Donald Nally, performs In a House Besieged on Friday, March 25, 2022 at 7:30pm at the Cleveland Museum of Art in Cleveland, OH; Saturday, March 26, 2022 at 3:00pm at Shadyside Presbyterian Church in Pittsburgh, PA; and on Sunday, March 27, 2022 at 7:00pm at St. Mark’s Church in Philadelphia, PA, presented by Penn Live Arts. The concerts feature The Crossing and “brilliant organist” (Dallas Morning News) Scott Dettra in the world premiere of Chicago-based composer Stacy Garrop's In a House Besieged, commissioned by the Cleveland Museum of Art, as well as The Crossing in Lansing McLoskey’s The Memory of Rain and Arvo Pärt’s Salve Regina.
Stacy Garrop’s In a House Besieged fuses the writings of American short-story writer, novelist, and essayist Lydia Davis into a unique libretto reflecting the fear and anxiety around the aging process. Davis’s texts ask the question, “We see our homes and the world around us crumble and decay with time; can we admit that our bodies and minds will do the same?” Through her mastery of choral textures, Garrop ponders, “Is our topic a crumbling society, cognitive collapse, moral deprivation, or the devastating disintegration of our environment?”
The piece presents five stories over the course of as many movements, each highlighting various aspects of the aging process. Two additional fragments woven between these movements serve as a prologue, a series of interludes, and an epilogue. One fragment consists of the sounds someone makes while trying to recall how to pronounce the word “woman.” The other fragment, when fully heard at the end of the piece, illustrates the rising apprehension a person experiences with the onset and progression of dementia.
Tom Welsh, Director of Performing Arts at the Cleveland Museum of Art, notes, “The Cleveland debut of The Crossing will be especially meaningful to us, as Stacy Garrop’s piece is dedicated to the memory of our longtime friend Robert G. Schneider. Bob was for many years the president of the Musart Society, longtime supporters of music in the museum, and Stacy’s work is written for his two great loves – choir and organ.”
Though just a few hours away from its home in Philadelphia, The Crossing’s performance at Shadyside Presbyterian Church, part of their 29th annual Music in a Great Space Concert Series, will be the ensemble’s Pittsburgh debut. The final concert of the tour at St. Mark’s Church in Philadelphia, presented by Penn Live Arts, is a returning home of sorts, as it was the site of The Crossing’s first concert in November 2005.
The program also includes Lansing McCloskey’s The Memory of Rain, based on poems by 2011 U.S. poet laureate Philip Levine that was premiered by The Crossing at The Month of Moderns 2010, its annual summer festival of new music. The program includes the introspective Salve Regina by the Estonian spiritual minimalist, Arvo Pärt.
Program Information
In a House Besieged
Friday, March 25, 2022 at 7:30pm
Gartner Auditorium, Cleveland Museum of Art | Cleveland, OH
Tickets: $30-45
Link: www.crossingchoir.org/events/
Saturday, March 26, 2022 at 3:00pm
Shadyside Presbyterian Church | Pittsburgh, PA
Tickets: $15
Link: www.crossingchoir.org/events/
Sunday, March 27, 2022 at 7:00pm
St. Mark’s Church | Philadelphia, PA
Tickets: $35
Link: www.crossingchoir.org/events/
Program:
Stacy Garrop – In a House Besieged [World Premiere]*
Lansing McLoskey – The Memory of Rain (from The Month of Moderns 2010)
Arvo Pärt – Salve Regina
*Commissioned by the Cleveland Museum of Art, Tom Welsh, Director of Performing Arts, Music and Film; with generous support of the Musart Society, in honor of Robert G. Schneider. Written for The Crossing, Donald Nally, and Scott Dettra.
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 seven 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 as well as Paul Fowler’s Obligations, based on a poem of Layli Long Soldier, 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 live performances with notes by 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.
About Scott Dettra
Praised as a “brilliant organist” (Dallas Morning News), an “outstanding musician” (The Diapason), and described as a “prodigy” by The New York Times at age 13, Scott Dettra is acclaimed as one of America’s leading concert organists. Mr. Dettra’s playing is praised for its clarity, rhythmic intensity, and musical elegance, and has been described by The American Organist as “music making of absolute authority and sophisticated expression.”
He combines an active performance schedule with his post as Director of Music at the Church of the Incarnation in Dallas, where he leads a vibrant music ministry in one the country’s largest Episcopal parishes. In addition to his work at Incarnation, he is a member of the organ faculty at Southern Methodist University, and is organist of The Crossing, the Grammy-winning professional chamber choir based in Philadelphia. Prior to his appointment in Dallas, he was Organist of Washington National Cathedral. Learn more at www.scottdettra.com.
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*Artwork at top of release by Sasan Pix
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