FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Leah Rankin | Morahan Arts and Media
leah@morahanartsandmedia.com | 646.378.9386

The Crossing Releases
Born: The Music of Edie Hill
and Michael Gilbertson

An expedition into themes of extinction, relationships, loss, and love

Out Today on Navona Records

Album Page: https://www.navonarecords.com/catalog/nv6449/

“Always a virtuoso ensemble, the group has evolved into
one of the most skilled choirs in North America” – AllMusic

"Such is their radiant sound and the vibrancy of the repertory they’ve cultivated, it’s gotten to the point I’d hear anything this Philadelphia vocal ensemble sings." – The New York Times

www.crossingchoir.org

New York, NY (August 12, 2022) — Acclaimed GRAMMY-winning choir The Crossing, led by Donald Nally, releases Born: The Music of Edie Hill and Michael Gilbertson, out today on Navona Records. Hill’s avian-inspired Spectral Spirits paints a colorful study of recently-extinct birds and their interaction with humankind, while Gilbertson’s Born and Returning address in raw and authentic language the complexities of our intimate relationships.

Edie Hill’s Spectral Spirits was commissioned by The Crossing and premiered in Philadelphia and New York City in 2019. The Crossing describes the piece as a “memorial to lost birds,” structured in four pillars representing four bird species that are extinct. The 30-minute piece pairs pastoral musical textures of poetry by Holly J. Hughes with observations of Henry David Thoreau, Gert Goebel, Christopher Cokinos, Lucien M. Turner, Paul A. Johnsgard, and Alexander Wilson to create a nostalgic journey the composer describes as an “emotional sequence of falling in love with a bird, followed by grieving its loss.”

“Composing Spectral Spirits was as much a study of humans as it was of birds,” said Hill. “I found myself asking how human beings managed to obliterate these species. In some cases, populations were brought back from the brink of extinction only to be brought down again… Why, if we see something alive, vibrant, with striking color, do we want to possess it to the point of oblivion? Why is it permissible to destroy nature in the name of “progress” or financial gain? In the end: we all lose. I grieve every day for the state of our planet and her creatures. Composing Spectral Spirits was a gift that gave me a chance to funnel this grief.”

Two works by Michael Gilbertson bookend the album, leading with Born, based on a poem by Wislawa Szymborska, which was premiered by The Crossing in 2017. The piece was commissioned by conductor Donald Nally and his spouse Steven Hyder in memory of Donald’s mother; it contemplates birth, familial relationships, and the human condition. Gilbertson’s Returning closes the album with the biblical story of David and Jonathan from the Hebrew Bible. Returning draws on text from Kai Hoffman-Krull exploring themes of friendship, fraternal and passionate love, absence and longing. Returning was recently featured by The Crossing at a performance in recognition of the 20th anniversary of 9/11 at the Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill in Philadelphia in 2021.

Of Born, Donald says, “We love singing this work because of the way Michael reaches the revelatory moment, through the intertwining of middle voices – one male, one female – holding the fabric of our thoughts together, that slowly rise to an epiphany in which thoughts of birth and of parenting lead to thoughts of the human condition. Michael responds with a kind of controlled howl. A declamation: simultaneously triumphant and despondent.”

About Edie Hill
For Edie Hill, writing music is an opportunity to research, learn, muse, reach down deep, and allow inspiration to come from the stuff of life. Her compositions are fueled by her experiences, passions, and curiosities.

Born in New York City in 1962, Hill’s love for making music was encouraged by her parents. Her dyslectic, difficult grade school days were eased by coming home to the piano to improvise/compose for hours on end. After earning a B.A. from Bennington College under the tutelage of Vivian Fine, Hill moved to Minneapolis earning M.A. and Ph.D. degrees at the University of Minnesota with Lloyd Ultan. She also studied extensively with Libby Larsen.

Her works have been performed worldwide at venues including Lincoln Center, LA County Museum of Art, Library of Congress, Minneapolis’ Walker Arts Center, St. Paul’s Schubert Club, The Cape May Festival (NJ), The Met Cloisters (NYC), Annenberg Center Live Series (Philadelphia, PA) and concert halls in Eastern and Western Europe, Thailand, Iceland, Russia, Brazil, Great Britain, New Zealand, and The United Arab Emirates.

Her music has earned her three McKnight Artist Fellowships, two Bush Artist Fellowships and grants/awards from the Jerome Foundation, ASCAP, New Music USA, Meet The Composer, the Minnesota State Arts Board, and Chamber Music America. She has been commissioned to compose for everything from solo flute to mass band; from art song to large choral works.

She was Composer in Residence at Schubert Club from 2005-2017 where she ran and grew the Mentorship Program for high school composers. She was Composer Mentor for MN Varsity for composers 14-18 years of age co-sponsored by The American Composers Forum and Classical Minnesota Public Radio. She has lectured at colleges, universities, and various institutions in the United States and abroad. Her music is available from Hummingbird Press. Learn more at https://www.ediehill.com/

About Michael Gilbertson
The works of Michael Gilbertson have been described as “elegant” and “particularly beautiful” by The New York Times, “vivid, tightly woven” and “delectably subtle” by the Baltimore Sun, “genuinely moving” by the Washington Post, and “a compelling fusion of new and ancient” by the Philadelphia Inquirer. Gilbertson is the BMI Composer in Residence with the San Francisco Chamber Orchestra and is a professor at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. He was a finalist for the 2018 Pulitzer Prize in Music for his Quartet.

Gilbertson holds degrees from The Juilliard School and Yale University. His works have been programmed by orchestras including the Minnesota Orchestra, Pittsburgh Symphony, Washington National Opera, Albany Symphony, New World Symphony, Cabrillo Festival Orchestra, Grand Rapids Symphony, Santa Barbara Symphony, River Oaks Chamber Orchestra, Symphony in C, wind ensembles including The United States Marine Band, and choirs including Musica Sacra, The Crossing, and Conspirare.

Gilbertson’s work has earned awards including a Lieberson Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Copland House Residency Award, five Morton Gould Awards from ASCAP, and a BMI Student Composer Award. In March, 2016, he was Musical America Magazine’s featured Artist of the Month. His opera Breaking, a collaboration with playwright Caroline McGraw, was commissioned by the Washington National Opera and premiered at The Kennedy Center in November, 2013. He has twice composed and conducted ballets for the New York City Ballet’s Choreographic Institute and his fifth ballet, a collaboration with choreographer Norbert De La Cruz, was premiered by the Aspen Santa Fe Ballet in July 2013. Gilbertson serves as artistic director of an annual music festival, ChamberFest Dubuque, which he founded in 2009 to raise money for a community school in his hometown of Dubuque IA. Learn more at https://michaelgilbertson.net/

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 140 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 PARMA Recordings
Navona Records is a PARMA Recordings Company. PARMA Recordings is a leading figure in the commercial production and curated promotion of sounds by today’s musicians. Since 2008, PARMA’s GRAMMY-winning team has produced over 900 commercial releases, with works ranging from Billboard-topping classical chamber music to Cuban jazz to experimental electronic works. Music from their distributed labels has been featured in settings from CBS to Carnegie Hall, Microsoft to the Musikverein, and Nintendo to National Geographic. The 2019 Navona Records release from The Crossing THE ARC IN THE SKY was nominated for a 2020 GRAMMY Award and the 2020 Navona Records release CARTHAGE was nominated for a 2021 GRAMMY Award.

Born: The Music of Edie Hill and Michael Gilbertson Tracklist
MICHAEL GILBERTSON (b. 1987) – Born
1. Born [9:45]
EDIE HILL (b. 1962) – Spectral Spirits
2. Spectral Spirits: I: Prelude: These Birds [2:22]
Maren Montalbano, soloist
3. Spectral Spirits: II. Eyewitness: Henry David Thoreau and the Passenger Pigeon [1:40]
James Reese, soloist
4. Spectral Spirits: III. The Naming: Passenger Pigeon [0:15]
Maren Montalbano, soloist
5. Spectral Spirits: IV. Passenger Pigeon [6:41]
6. Spectral Spirits: V. Eyewitness: Gert Goebel and the Paroquets [1:43]
Dominic German, soloist
7. Spectral Spirits: VI. The Naming: Carolina Parakeet [0:17]
Maren Montalbano, soloist
8. Spectral Spirits: VII. Carolina Parakeet [3:27]
9. Spectral Spirits: VIII. Eyewitness: Lucinen M. Turner and the Migration of the Curlews [3:50]
Rebecca Myers, soloist
10. Spectral Spirits: IX. The Naming: Eskimo Curlew [0:20]
Maren Montalbano, soloist
11. Spectral Spirits: X. Eskimo Curlew [3:55]
12. Spectral Spirits: XI. Eyewitness: Mr. Wilson and the Ivory-bill [2:07]
Dominic German, soloist
13. Spectral Spirits: XII. The Naming: Ivory-Billed Woodpecker [0:19]
Maren Montalbano, soloist
14. Spectral Spirits: XIII. Ivory-Billed Woodpecker [5:11]
MICHAEL GILBERTSON (b. 1987) – Returning
15. Returning: Part 1: What knits us [9:32]
16. Returning: Part 2: I thought of staying quiet [9:23]

The Crossing
Donald Nally, conductor
Kevin Vondrak, assistant conductor
John Grecia and Mark Livshits, keyboards

Executive Producer: Bob Lord
A&R Director: Brandon MacNeil
VP, Audio Production: Jan Košulic
Audio Director: Lucas Paquette
VP, Design & Marketing: Brett Picknell
Art Director: Ryan Harrison
Design: Edward A. Fleming
Publicity: Patrick Niland

Recording Produced by Donald Nally, Paul Vazquez & Kevin Vondrak
Additional Engineering, Editing, Mixing & Mastering by Paul Vazquez
Album Artwork by Christopher St. John

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