June 20-23: Grammy-Winning Choir, The Crossing, Premieres Aniara: fragments of time and space in Philadelphia

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

Grammy-Winning Choir, The Crossing, Performs World Premiere of
Aniara: fragments of time and space, June 20–23

An Evening Length Choral-Theater Work Developed with Helsinki’s Klockriketeatern

Visit the Aniara Website: Aniara.CrossingChoir.org
 

PHILADELPHIA, PA (May 7, 2019) — Grammy-winning new music choir, The Crossing, performs the world premiere of, Aniara: fragments of time and space, in five performances – Thursday, June 20, 2019 at 7:30 p.m.; Friday, June 21, 2019 at 7:30 p.m.; Saturday, June 22, 2019 at 3:00 p.m. and 8:00 p.m.; and Sunday, June 23, 2019 at 8:00 p.m. – at Christ Church Neighborhood House in Philadelphia.

Aniara: fragments of time and space is an epic collaboration developed by The Crossing, Klockriketeatern of Helsinki and American composer Robert Maggio over a period of three years, with artistic direction by Dan Henriksson and Donald Nally. The culmination of The Crossing’s 2018-2019 season, Aniara is the ensemble’s most ambitious theatrical project to date, featuring Beijing Opera-inspired choreography and dance by Antti Silvennoinen of Wusheng Company, costumes by Erika Turunen, scenic and lighting design by Joonas Tikkanen, and sound design by Paul Vasquez.

The last spaceship to leave a dying earth veers off course and heads into eternity; her passengers are left to face the emptiness within and without. Based on the iconic poem by Nobel Prize winner Harry Martinson, Aniara: fragments of time and space follows the physical and emotional voyage of this group, headed toward the constellation Lyra, forever.  Like many of The Crossing’s commissions, Aniara shines a light on issues humanity faces today, such as environmentalism, social order and its breakdown, and fanaticism. Sometimes cold and brutal, at other times touching, Aniara is a ruthlessly honest view of human nature that also brings art into the picture as a tragic character.

Klockriketeatern is a nomadic theater company led by artistic director Dan Henriksson that collaborates with new partners and artists from various countries, in different spaces, working in several languages, and continuing stories about contemporary vagabonds and trails outside the norms of societies. Established in 1991 in Helsinki, their name is drawn from Harry Martinson’s Vägen till Klockrike (The Road).

Future performances of Aniara: fragments of time and space include The Crossing’s European debut on July 3 and 4, 2019 at the The Haarlem Choral Biennale in The Netherlands and performances from September 17-21, 2019 at The Finnish National Opera in Helsinki.

Program Information
Aniara: fragments of time and space
Christ Church Neighborhood House
20 North American Street | Philadelphia, PA 19106

Thursday, June 20, 2019 at 7:30 p.m.
Friday, June 21, 2019 at 7:30 p.m.
Saturday, June 22, 2019 at 3:00 p.m.
Saturday, June 22, 2019 at 8:00 p.m.
Sunday, June 23, 2019 at 4:00 p.m.

Performers and Production Team:
The Crossing
Klockriketeatern
Robert Maggio, composer
Matti Raita, actor
Carl Alm, actor
Dan Henriksson and Donald Nally, artistic directors
Antti Silvennoinen, choreographer/dancer
Erika Turunen, costumes
Joonas Tikkanen, scenic and lighting designer
Paul Vasquez, sound designer

Tickets: $35 General Admission, $25 Seniors, $20 Students at aniara.crossingchoir.org

Crediting: Major support for Aniara has been provided by The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage, with additional support from The Arts Promotion Center Finland, The American-Scandinavian Foundation, Finlandia Foundation National, and the National Endowment for the Arts

About Robert Maggio
Robert Maggio is an accomplished composer and long-time member of the BMI Musical Theatre Workshop in New York City; he has composed songs and incidental music for numerous professional theaters, including productions at Yale Repertory Theater, Philadelphia Theater Company, Peoples Light and Theater Company, Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival, and Shakespeare Santa Cruz; his music for theater has received several Barrymore Award nominations in Philadelphia. His new work Touch Tones will receive its premiere at The Arden Theater next season.

Dance companies across the United States have commissioned Maggio for new scores and some of the nation's top orchestras have performed Maggio's orchestral music across North America; Maggio is the recipient of numerous honors and awards, including a Pew Fellowship from The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage and grants from the Guggenheim Foundation, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the American Composers Forum, the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, ASCAP, BMI, New Music USA and Meet the Composer.

Published by Theodore Presser Company, Hickman Music Editions and Yelton Rhodes, Maggio’s music is recorded on the Summit, Albany and New World/CRI labels. A graduate of Yale University and the University of Pennsylvania, Robert Maggio lives with his family in Lambertville, New Jersey. He is a Professor and Chairman of the Department of Music Theory, History and Composition at West Chester University’s School of Music in West Chester, PA. Learn more at www.robertmaggio.com.

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 over seventy commissioned premieres address social, environmental, and political issues.

Highly sought after for collaborative projects, The Crossing’s first collaboration was as the resident choir of the Spoleto Festival, Italy, in 2007. The Crossing has appeared at Miller Theatre of Columbia University with the International Contemporary Ensemble, with whom they have appeared at the Mostly Mozart Festival at Lincoln Center. They joined Bang on a Can for its first Philadelphia Marathon; and have sung with the LA Philharmonic, the American Composers Orchestra, Network for New Music, Lyric Fest, Piffaro, Tempesta di Mare Baroque Chamber Orchestra, PRISM Saxophone Quartet, Toshimaru Nakamura, Beth Morrison Projects, Dolce Suono, Allora & Calzadilla, Pig Iron Theatre Company and The Rolling Stones. Venues include National Sawdust, Disney Hall in Los Angeles, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, The Kennedy Center in Washington, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall, Northwestern University, Colgate University, and the Winter Garden in New York with WNYC. In 2014 they premiered John Luther Adams’ Sila: the breath of the world at Lincoln Center. The Crossing holds an annual residency at the Warren Miller Performing Arts Center in Big Sky, Montana where they are working on an extensive, multi-year project with composer Michael Gordon and filmmaker Bill Morrison. Their concerts are broadcast regularly on WRTI, 90.1 FM, Philadelphia’s Classical and Jazz Public Radio. In the 2018-19 season they made their debut at the New York Philharmonic, Park Avenue Armory, and Peak Performances at Montclair State University.

The Crossing has presented over seventy commissioned world premieres. Major new works have included Michael Gordon’s Anonymous Man (2017), Michael Gilbertson’s Born (2017), Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s Ad genua (2016), Lansing McLoskey’s Zealot Canticles (2017), Caroline Shaw’s To the Hands (2016), John Luther Adams’ Canticles of the Holy Wind (2013, co-commissioned with Kamer), Gavin Bryars’ The Fifth Century (2014, written for The Crossing and PRISM), Stratis Minakakis’ Crossings Cycle (2015/2017), Gregory Brown’s un/bodying/s (2017), David Lang’s statement to the court (2010), Lewis Spratlan’s Hesperus is Phosphorus (2012, co-commissioned with Network for New Music), Ted Hearne’s Sound From the Bench (2014, co-commissioned with Volti) and, from Kile Smith, The Arc in the Sky (2018), The Consolation of Apollo (2014), The Waking Sun (2011), and Vespers (2008, a commission of Piffaro). In 2016, The Crossing presented Seven Responses with new works including those of David T. Little, Hans Thomalla, Pelle Gudmundsen-Holmgreen, and Santa Ratniece. That same year, The Crossing commissioned and presented Jeff Quartets, a rare compilation of quartets from fifteen of the world’s leading composers, presented as a concert-length set and collected in an omnibus edition. In June 2019, The Crossing will present its largest project to date - Aniara: fragments of time and space, a collaboration with Klockriketeatern in Helsinki, and composer Robert Maggio. Future projects include composers Julia Wolfe, Toivo Tulev, Edie Hill, Daniel Felsenfeld, Gregory Spears, Tawnie Olson, James Primosch, Stacy Garrop, Jacob Cooper, and Aaron Helgeson.

With a commitment to recording their commissions, The Crossing has fifteen commercially-released recordings, two Grammy Awards, and three nominations. Their collaboration with PRISM, Gavin Bryars’ The Fifth Century (ECM, October 2016), was the winner of the 2018 Grammy Award for Best Choral Performance and named one of The Chicago Tribune’s Top 10 Classical CDs of the 2016. Lansing McLoskey's Zealot Canticles won the 2019 Grammy and Thomas Lloyd’s Bonhoeffer (Albany 2016) was nominated for the 2017 Grammy, both as Best Choral Performance.

The Crossing, with Donald Nally, was the American Composers Forums’ 2017 Champion of New Music. The Crossing’s 2014 commission Sound from The Bench by Ted Hearne was named a 2018 Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Music. They were the recipient of the 2015 Margaret Hillis Award for Choral Excellence, three ASCAP Awards for Adventurous Programming, as well as the Dale Warland Singers Commission Award (with composer Joel Puckett) from Chorus America.

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