The Crossing: Crickets in our Backyard

Program

AYANNA WOODS, Infinite Decay

WANG LU, At Which Point

TANIA LEÓN, Singsong* (with Claire Chase)

*From the poem “To Number our Days”

U.S. Poet Laureate and 1987 Pulitzer winner Rita Dove has been describing our world in language that pulls back the curtain on how we love and gives breathtaking testimony to violence. Her words are set to music by 2021 Pulitzer winner Tania León in a new work for MacArthur Fellow Claire Chase and The Crossing, conducted by Donald Nally. The work promises relevance, virtuosity, and a lasting life as a significant addition to the canon of new music commissioned by The Crossing. Also on the program is a substantial new work from Ayanna Woods, the culminating project of her year-long position as The Crossing’s first Resident Composer, as well as the reprise of Wang Lu’s At Which Point, composed in the depths of the pandemic, setting a devastatingly truthful rumination on being left behind by 2019 Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Forrest Gander.

The Crossing is a 24-voice 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 160 commissioned premieres address social, environmental, and political issues. With a commitment to recording its commissions, The Crossing has issued 29 releases, receiving three Grammy Awards for Best Choral Performance (2018, 2019, 2023), and nine Grammy nominations.