The Crossing Performs World Premiere of Martin Bresnick's 'Self-Portraits 1964, Unfinished' on March 24

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Leah Rankin | Morahan Arts and Media
leah@morahanartsandmedia.com | 646-378-9386

THE CROSSING PERFORMS WORLD PREMIERE OF
MARTIN BRESNICK’S SELF-PORTRAITS 1964,
UNFINISHED ON MARCH 24

The Crossing Reunites with PRISM Quartet for
Performance of New Work Inspired by the Writing of
Melville, Joyce, Hardy, and Hopkins

www.crossingchoir.org

Philadelphia, PA (February 22, 2023) — Grammy Award-winning choir The Crossing, led by conductor Donald Nally, gives the world premiere of Martin Bresnick’s Self-Portraits 1964, Unfinished on Friday, March 24, 2023 at 7:00 p.m. at Church of the Holy Trinity in Rittenhouse Square. Co-presented by Penn Live Arts, the concert features The Crossing reuniting with PRISM Quartet. The Crossing’s initial collaboration with PRISM, Gavin Bryars’s The Fifth Century, resulted in The Crossing’s first Grammy Award for Best Choral Performance.

Recognized both as a renowned composer and as one of the most influential teachers of composition today, Bresnick has filled his new work with a tumultuous journey of questioning, whimsy, and stoicism. Yearning, love, and the mysteries of existence lie at the foundation of this new work, in which the colors and textures of saxophones and voices are woven together to create a series of compelling sound worlds. The work demonstrates the remarkable compatibility of, and similarities between, saxophones and voice.

The program also features Bernd Franke’s 2005 composition, On the Dignity of Man, a setting of excerpts from the most well-known philosophical document of the 15th century, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola’s undelivered speech of the same title. Also for saxophone quartet and choir, the work is notably different from Bresnick’s Self-Portraits 1964, Unfinished, in that the two ensembles live in quite different musical worlds.

The Crossing’s season continues with upcoming performances of John Luther Adams’s Vespers of the Blessed Earth with the Philadelphia Orchestra on Thursday, March 30, Saturday, April 1, and Sunday, April 2, 2023 at the Kimmel Center, and on Friday, March 31, 2023 in Carnegie Hall’s Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage.

Performance Details
Self-Portraits 1964, Unfinished
The Crossing
Donald Nally, conductor
Friday, March 24, 2023 at 7:00 p.m.
Church of the Holy Trinity, Rittenhouse Square | 1904 Walnut St | Philadelphia, PA 19103
Tickets: $40
Link: https://www.crossingchoir.org/events/2022-23/self-portraits

Program:
Martin Bresnick - Self-Portraits 1964, Unfinished (World Premiere)
Bernd Franke - On the Dignity of Man

Artists:
The Crossing
Donald Nally, conductor
PRISM Quartet

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 nearly 160 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, 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 the 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 released 29 albums, receiving three Grammy Awards for Best Choral Performance (2018, 2019, 2023), and eight 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, Eric Southern, and Steven Bradshaw, and composers David Lang, Paul Fowler, and Michael Gordon on live and animated versions of new and existing works. Lang’s protect yourself from infection and in nature were specifically designed to be performed within the restrictions imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic, during which The Crossing premiered a number of newly-commissioned works for outdoors by Matana Roberts, Wang Lu, and Ayanna Woods.

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 Martin Bresnick
Martin Bresnick's compositions, from opera, chamber and symphonic music to film scores and computer music, are performed throughout the world. Bresnick delights in reconciling the seemingly irreconcilable, bringing together repetitive gestures derived from minimalism with a harmonic palette that encompasses both highly chromatic sounds and more open, consonant harmonies and a raw power reminiscent of rock. At times his musical ideas spring from hardscrabble sources, often with a very real political import. But his compositions never descend into agitprop; one gains their meaning by the way the music itself unfolds, and always on its own terms.

Besides having received many prizes and commissions, the first Charles Ives Living Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, The Rome Prize, The Berlin Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a Koussevitzky Commission, among many others, Martin Bresnick is also recognized as an influential teacher of composition. Students from every part of the globe and of virtually every musical inclination have been inspired by his critical encouragement.

Martin Bresnick's compositions are published by Carl Fischer Music Publishers, New York; Bote & Bock, Berlin; CommonMuse Music Publishers, New Haven; and have been recorded by Cantaloupe Records, New World Records, Albany Records, Bridge Records, Composers Recordings Incorporated, Centaur, Starkland Records and Artifact Music.

About PRISM Quartet
Intriguing programs of great beauty and breadth have distinguished the PRISM Quartet as one of America’s foremost chamber ensembles. “A bold ensemble that set the standard for contemporary-classical saxophone quartets” (The New York Times), PRISM has been presented by Carnegie Hall, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and throughout Latin America, China, and Russia under the auspices of USIA and USArtists International. PRISM has also appeared as soloists with the Detroit Symphony and Cleveland Orchestra, and conducted residencies at the nation’s leading conservatories, including the Curtis Institute and the Oberlin Conservatory. Two-time recipients of the Chamber Music America/ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming, PRISM has commissioned nearly 300 works by eminent composers, including Pulitzer Prize-winners Julia Wolfe, William Bolcom, Jennifer Higdon, Zhou Long, and Bernard Rands; MacArthur “Genius” Award recipients Tyshawn Sorey, Bright Sheng, and Miguel Zenón; and US Artists Fellow Susie Ibarra. PRISM’s discography is extensive, with releases on Albany, BMOP/Sound, ECM, innova, Koch, Naxos, New Dynamic, New Focus, Orange Mountain Music, and its own label, XAS Records. The Fifth Century, PRISM’s ECM recording with The Crossing, was awarded a 2018 Grammy for Best Choral Performance. In 2016, PRISM was named by its alma mater, the University of Michigan, as the first recipient of the Christopher Kendall Award in recognition of its work in “collaboration, entrepreneurship, and community engagement.” The PRISM Quartet performs exclusively on Selmer saxophones.

About Penn Live Arts
Penn Live Arts (PLA), the leading presenter of innovative and transformative performing arts experiences in Philadelphia, celebrates the 50th anniversary of its home, the Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts, in the 2022-23 season. A vital resource for the performing arts at the University of Pennsylvania, PLA is an artistic crossroads joining Penn and the greater Philadelphia region through world-class music, dance, theatre, and film on campus and at venues throughout the city. Penn Live Arts’ extensive history of commissioning and championing artists has fostered important creative work by theatre legend Hal Prince, new music composers Philip Glass and Steve Reich, boundary-pushing choreographers Paul Taylor, David Parsons and Moses Pendleton, jazz greats Hugh Masekela, Terence Blanchard and Branford Marsalis, and many more. For younger audiences, the Student Discovery series offers weekday matinees and the annual Philadelphia Children's Festival, established in 1985 as the first event of its kind in the nation. Penn Live Arts emphasizes artistic and intellectual excellence and diversity in its offerings; prioritizes broad inclusiveness in the artists, audiences and groups it serves; and expands arts access by actively engaging a wide range of audiences and inclusive communities from campus, the West Philadelphia neighborhood and the surrounding region.

Photo credit: John C. Hawthorne

# # #