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The Crossing @ Christmas

Carols after a Plague

Event Location: Annenberg Center, Zellerbach Theatre

“America’s most astonishing choir” (The New York Times) reflects on this unique time in history as we begin to emerge from isolation and resume experiencing music together. To mark the holiday season and celebrate the value of life, conductor Donald Nally and The Crossing commissioned new works by 12 composers of diverse background, style, experience, identity and race who will collectively contemplate our recent past. Known for an “embrace of the new, a social conscience and fearless technique,” (The New York Times) The Crossing seeks to find the right words to fit this moment of our lives.

Composers
Leila Adu, Alex Berko, Edith Canat de Chizy, Viet Cuong, Samantha Fernando, Vanessa Lann, Mary Jane Leach, Shara Nova, Joseph C. Phillips Jr., Nina Shekhar, Tyshawn Sorey, LJ White

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Performances

• Friday, December 17 @ 7 PM

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Artist Information

The Crossing Bio

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 over 110 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 (ICE). Similarly, The Crossing often collaborates with some of world’s most prestigious venues and presenters, such as the Park Avenue Armory, Penn Live 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 26 releases, receiving two Grammy® Awards for Best Choral Performance (2018, 2019) and six Grammy® nominations. The Crossing, with Donald Nally, was the American Composers Forum’s 2017 Champion of New Music. It was the recipient 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 were specifically designed to be performed within the restrictions imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Program Notes [PDF]

Photo credit: Becky Oehlers Photography