“America’s most astonishing choir.”
Singers from the two-time Grammy-winning ensemble The Crossing join forces with singers from the Montana-based choir Roots in the Sky (formerly Aoide Singers) in their sixth summer residency with an innovative approach to ensemble singing in the time of COVID-19. The Crossing and WMPAC are commissioning the Oscar-nominated and Pulitzer Prize-winning composer David Lang to create a new piece specifically for the concept of singing together from a distance, and its world premiere will take place at WMPAC on August 1st.
The Crossing is a 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 ninety commissioned premieres address social, environmental, and political issues. With a commitment to recording its commissions, The Crossing has issued nineteen releases, receiving two Grammy Awards for Best Choral Performance (2018, 2019), and seven Grammy nominations.
Composer David Lang is one of America’s most performed composers. Many of his works resemble each other only in the fierce intelligence and clarity of vision that inform their structures. His catalogue is extensive, and his opera, orchestra, chamber and solo works are by turns ominous, ethereal, urgent, hypnotic, unsettling and very emotionally direct. Much of his work seeks to expand the definition of virtuosity in music — even the deceptively simple pieces can be fiendishly difficult to play and require incredible concentration by musicians and audiences alike. Acclaimed for his vocal music, including his Pulitzer Prize-winning the little match girl passion, and for writing narrative music for dance, films, and theatrical productions, as well as his own operas. He earned Golden Globe, Critics’ Choice, and Academy Award nominations for his music for Paolo Sorrentino’s film YOUTH. Most recently, Lang scored Paul Dano’s directorial debut, Wildlife, as well as Patty Jenkins’s limited series I Am the Night.
Eighth Blackbird, Roomful of Teeth, JITRO