The Crossing announces an ambitious and timely 21st season

World premieres, new artistic partnerships and venues, and explorations of 250 years of American Independence and freedom combine for a bold season

Four-time Grammy Award-winning professional choir, The Crossing, conducted by Donald Nally, announces its 2025-2026 Season: Of being numerous. Ambitious and timely, the season takes The Crossing to Carnegie Hall, Boston Symphony Hall, Stanford University, Hershey, PA, Greenville, SC, Milwaukee, WI, The Mann Center for the Performing Arts, and many more venues in and around Philadelphia. Collaborators include Present Music, the Boston Symphony, Sandbox Percussion, the Philadelphia Orchestra, pianist Dynasty Battles, cellist Thomas Mesa, and flutist Claire Chase. The season features several commissioned world premieres composed by Nicole Lizée, Natalia Tsupryk, Kile Smith, Nathalie Joachim, Christopher Cerrone, Nina Shekhar (The Crossing’s 2023-2024 Resident Composer), and Sarah Rimkus (2024-2025 Resident Composer). The Crossing has also established new partnerships with ArtPhilly, to celebrate the 250^th anniversary of American Independence, and Artcinia, to bring its music to underserved neighborhoods in Philadelphia.

In addition to the composers of the six premieres, the season includes works by numerous composers familiar to The Crossing: David Lang, Caroline Shaw, Robert Maggio, Shara Nova, Benjamin C.S. Boyle, Julia Wolfe, Jennifer Higdon, Edie Hill, Michael Gordon, and Gabriel Jackson.

“Our 2025-2026 Season draws its name from a poem of George Oppen, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author and American dissident who suspended writing for nearly two decades while participating in the resistance against the threat of fascism and attacks on free speech in post-WWII America,” said Artistic Director Donald Nally. “His words are set by Christopher Cerrone for our collaboration with Present Music in Milwaukee and Philadelphia. We couldn’t think of a more apt choice to define our season of new works for choir, as we celebrate 250 years of America's freedoms, achievements, struggles, and divisions; specifically, as presented in ArtPhilly’s city-wide What Now:2026 arts festival. We bring Ukraine into the conversation by introducing the music of Natalia Tsupryk whose works are often inspired by the current war to maintain the independence and freedoms of that country’s people. Along the way, we sing of love and of loss, of joy and of grief, as we revisit many works we’ve commissioned from Philadelphia composers as well as those from our canon addressing the social justice issues that both challenge us and make us stronger.” 

Unalienable
World premiere of Nina Shekhar’s Tic-Talk with Dynasty Battles, MIDI keyboard, along with music of Kile Smith and Michael Gilbertson

Saturday, October 18 at 7pm
The Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia

Sunday, October 19 at 3pm
First Presbyterian Church in Germantown, Philadelphia
Presented in partnership with Artcinia

The Crossing offers its first live performance of its 2024 pre-election video project, Cloud Anthem, composed by Michael Gilbertson and based on Richard Blanco’s poem that, insisting there is a way to come together, to measure the time “until we….” The world premiere of Kile Smith’s Let all the Strains of Joy (mingle in my last song), a gift to The Crossing, is heard alongside his earlier Rabindranath Tagore motet.

 

The anchor of the concert is a world premiere from 2023-2024 Resident Composer Nina Shekhar, whose Tic-Talk evolves from her experience as a child with vocal tics to an examination of language – specifically, its policing. Philadelphia pianist Dynasty Battles joins The Crossing on MIDI keyboard, which contributes to the extraordinary sound world created by this uniquely imaginative composer.

Artcinia partners with organizations like The Crossing in a shared belief that everyone deserves access to the transformative power of the performing arts. Its flagship program Music in Your Neighborhood, in partnership with Partners for Sacred Places, brings community-driven, engaging, affordable performances to neighborhood spaces throughout Philadelphia and beyond, making the arts accessible to all. This partnership will enable The Crossing’s debut performance at First Presbyterian Church in Germantown on Sunday, Oct. 19.

Nina Shekhar’s Tic-Talk is commissioned for The Crossing and Donald Nally by Elizabeth and Justus Schlichting; Nina’s time as 2023-2024 Resident Composer was made possible by a gift from Peter and Judy Leone.
 

Self-Evident
World premiere of Christopher Cerrone’s Of being numerous with Present Music, Milwaukee, along with Caroline Shaw’s Ochre (2022, reprise) 

Friday, November 21 at 7pm
The Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia

Sunday, November 23 at 5pm
Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist, Milwaukee     

The Crossing has long waited for a piece from Christopher Cerrone and this collaboration with the adventurous musicians of Present Music brings that opportunity – a new work, with dramatically relevant content, focusing on the poetry of Pulitzer Laureate and twice-exiled critic of the American government George Oppen, writing in a(nother) time of political tumult and fractured society.

Cerrone has set five sections of Oppen’s great tome Of being numerous – with its vision of diverse voices creating unity to produce an emerging mythopoetic idea of what America is – juxtaposed with the thoughts of other American patriots who turn a challenging lens on this great experiment. Likewise, Caroline Shaw focuses her lens on our relationship to the earth in Ochre, a series of seven scenes, each pondering the earth on which we walk, and on which we depend.

Christopher Cerrone’s Of being numerous is commissioned by Present Music for The Crossing and Present Music, which presents Cerrone’s new work in Milwaukee.

Our Lives, Our Fortunes, Our Sacred Honor
The world premieres of Sarah Rimkus’ Nativity and Ukrainian composer Natalia Tsupryk’s Kyiv (choral version) with Thomas Mesa, cello

Friday, December 19 at 7pm
St. Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

Sunday, December 21 at 5pm         
The Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia

How does a Christmas song express our numerousness? A mother's contemplations on her child's destiny contrast with our desire for peace and our seeming inability to achieve it. Mary intuits her son's journey: birth, life, and sacrifice – like us, holding hope of a common fate of freedom. The Crossing introduces works of Ukrainian composer Natalia Tsupryk, including a world premiere of a choral transcription of her Kyiv. At the center of “The Crossing @ Christmas 2025” is the culminating work of 2024-2025 Resident Composer Sarah Rimkus’ Nativity, featuring longtime collaborative cellist Thomas Mesa. Joyful motets and sorrowful laments, asking the question, “What is nativity?”

 

To Provide new Guards for their Future Security
The Crossing at Boston Symphony Orchestra featuring David Lang’s poor hymnal (new edition)

Thursday, January 29 at 7:30pm
Saturday, January 31 at 8pm
Symphony Hall, Boston                         

At the invitation of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, The Crossing travels from one birthplace of American Democracy to another to sing a new, abridged version of David Lang’s poor hymnal, a work that has quickly become the work most often performed by The Crossing. Its resonance and relevance seem to increase daily. We sing it in the hope that, someday, it won’t be necessary.

poor hymnal opens these BSO concerts; the second part of the concert finds the orchestra and gospel choirs giving the East Coast premiere of Carlos Simon’s Good News Mass, a celebratory homage to Black joy, spiritual discovery, and the power of faith.

 

Rectitude
The Crossing @ Stanford, featuring Harold Meltzer’s You Are Who I Love (2024, reprise) with Sandbox Percussion, along with works of Eriks Ešenvalds and Sarah Rimkus

Wednesday, February 25 at 7:30pm
Bing Concert Hall, Stanford University, California

Harold Meltzer's collaboration with poet (and Stanford faculty) Aracelis Girmay, You Are Who I Love, produced one of his largest and most thoughtful works. With the four percussionists of Sandbox playing over 100 instruments, the work floats with ease from humor to defiance, intimacy to insistence. Harold, who died in August 2024, left us a lasting gift to remind us of the value of hearing the unheard, seeing the unseen, and living a day, an hour, or just a moment in the life of another.

Harold’s work is bookended by music from Latvian composer Eriks Ešenvalds - his nearly symphonic The First Tears - and 2024-2025 Resident Composer, Sarah Rimkus, whose gripping cantata, Babylon, captures the plight of the unseen and wandering.

The performance of You Are Who I Love was made possible through generous gifts from a wide circle of friends to the Harold Meltzer Memorial Recording Fund. You Are Who I Love was commissioned for The Crossing and Donald Nally by Elizabeth and Justus Schlichting.

 

Declare the Causes
Infinite Body, a reprise of 2023 concert of commissioned premieres: Tania León’s Singsong with Claire Chase, flutes; Wang Lu’s At Which Point; and Ayanna Woods’ Infinite Body

Saturday, March 21 at 7pm
Derry Presbyterian Church, Hershey

Sunday, March 22 at 4pm
St. Luke and the Epiphany, Philadelphia
Presented in partnership with Artcinia §

Tuesday, March 24 at 7.30pm
Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall, NYC

The return of Claire Chase and the tsunami of energy that comes with her, as The Crossing revisits Rita Dove’s hard-edged, raw “cricket poems” in Tania León’s endlessly inventive Singsong, which dances its way through a journey of Black singers from pre-slavery to today. Wang Lu’s At Which Point boldly explores the fragility and emptiness of grief found in poet Forrest Gander’s world of those “left behind.” Finally, Ayanna Woods’ Infinite Body, a co-commission of Carnegie Hall and The Crossing, explores how capitalism influences our relationship to our bodies, peering through the lenses of the natural world, burnout culture, and embodiment, to observe and unsettle the notion of our separateness.

 

June brings The Month of Moderns 2026, ArtPhilly’s What Now: 2026 Festival, and a Mann Center performance, all focused on Philadelphia’s celebrations of America’s 250 Years of being numerous.

The Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God
Building a Contemporary Canon, Edition 1 
The People Address the Nation’s Issues
(The Society, The Environment, The Displaced)
A world premiere by Nicole Lizée, with works from our social justice commissions
Presented by ArtPhilly

Saturday, June 6 at 5pm
Venue TBD

Sunday, June 7 at 5pm
The Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia

The Crossing taps its vast catalogue of commissioned works for those that examine “Where we are.” The assessment, if not always optimistic, is tirelessly honest and inquisitive as heard through the music of some of the country’s most adventurous composers.  With a new work of Canadian composer Nicole Lizée and works of David Lang, Shara Nova, Julia Wolfe, Michael Gordon, Stratis Minakakis, John Luther Adams, Edie Hill, Caroline Shaw, and Gabriel Jackson for a kind of musical quilt that says, “We are here, and this is what it feels like to be here.”

ArtPhilly, whose goal is to establish Philadelphia as a globally recognized hub for arts and culture, presents What Now: 2026, a multi-disciplinary citywide “festival of all perspectives,” connecting audiences to each other through ongoing artistic programming and commissions of original works.

Nicole Lizée’s new work is commissioned by The Crossing and Donald Nally, Volti, and Cantori New York.

 

Created Equal
Peter Boyer's A Hundred Years On with The Philadelphia Orchestra      

Wednesday, June 17, Time TBD
The Mann Center for the Performing Arts, Philadelphia       

Audiences will live a single day at the 1876 Centennial Exposition through the experience of five characters traversing Fairmount Park – site of the expo and of the concert. America’s first world’s fair, the expo introduced the telephone, the typewriter, ketchup, and the beacon arm of the Statue of Liberty. The Crossing celebrates 150 years of this historic, iconic venue that brings neighborhoods together.

Life, Liberty, Pursuit of Happiness
Building a Contemporary Canon, Edition 2
The People Speak from the Birthplace of America
(Philadelphia Composers Ask Questions)
A world premiere of Nathalie Joachim with Thomas Mesa, cello, along with works from Philadelphia composer friends
Presented by ArtPhilly

Saturday, June 27 at 5pm
Venue TBD

Sunday, June 28 at 5pm
The Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia       

Nathalie Joachim’s compositions are informed by her work as a professional vocalist and flutist, as well her affinity for a wide variety of musical styles, including indie rock, pop, classical, and hip hop. With an eye toward the 250th celebration, she is setting the words of one of our founders, Benjamin Franklin, whose Thirteen Virtues were a set of moral guidelines he created to improve his character and attain a more virtuous life.

Digging still deeper into their catalogue of commissions, The Crossing finds the extraordinary community of Philadelphians, writing new works in this Place of the Declaration and sending out musical messages to the far corners of the globe. Composers Jennifer Higdon, Kile Smith, Robert Maggio, Julia Wolfe, James Primosch, Benjamin C.S. Boyle, and Tyshawn Sorey cover the stylistic landscape and explore everything from FDR’s vision of Democracy to the disappearance of bluestem grasses, to love, and to jazz.

 

About The Crossing
The Crossing is a professional chamber choir, conducted by Donald Nally, that sings only new music, bringing together creative teams to imagine, present, and record new, substantial works for choir that look at the world and our place in it. Often using a journalistic approach to text curation, The Crossing commissions music that explores and expands ways of writing for choir, singing in choir, and listening to music for choir; many of its nearly 200 commissioned premieres address social, environmental, and political issues. With a commitment to recording, The Crossing has issued 37 albums, receiving four Grammy Awards for Best Choral Performance (2018, 2019, 2023, 2025), and ten Grammy nominations in nine consecutive years. The Crossing, with Donald Nally, was Musical America’s 2024 Ensemble of the Year, the American Composers Forum’s 2017 Champion of New Music, and received the 2015 Margaret Hillis Award for Choral Excellence from Chorus America.