The Crossing - Rising w - The Crossing (Live) (2020) [Official Digital Download]

Grammy award-winning, Philadelphia-based new music choir The Crossing releases its 22nd commercial recording, Rising w/ The Crossing. This unusual collection of live recordings from the ensemble’s extensive archive was selected by conductor Donald Nally for the ensemble’s 60-part series of daily releases, launched in March 2020 as an immediate response to the 2020 pandemic. That series is now archived by The Library of Congress as “an important part of the historical record” and lives on through this album of twelve remarkably varied and polished performances that capture the urgency and immediacy of The Crossing in concert. Featuring music by David Lang, Joby Talbot, Êriks Ešenvalds, Paul Fowler, Ted Hearne, Santa Ratniece, Alex Berko, and movements from Dieterich Buxtehude’s Membra Jesu nostri, the album is an expression of solidarity and community in the time of COVID. The Crossing is joined by the International Contemporary Ensemble for movements of Lang’s the national anthems, and early-music ensemble Quicksilver for the Buxtehude tracks.

Of the album's conception, Nally says, “‘We really love singing together.’ Those are the words that came to me when viewing a Zoom screen of faces of my colleagues, as we let them know we couldn’t sing together in March. Singing had been determined an unsafe activity at the outset of the coronavirus pandemic. Our response to this grief was to ask how we can continue expressing and gathering, how we can hold the community together, how we can ensure artists can pay their rents, how we can use what resources we have to rethink who we are at this moment. One of those resources is an archive of 15 years of live concert recordings, musical moments in our history that stand out as special or loved or fun or challenging or just calm at a time when calmness stands in relief against a background of chaos moving into the foreground at the beginning of the Great Shut Down. We wanted to feel like we were walking through this together, waking up and starting our day together, Rising w/ The Crossing. So, we began sharing these archived moments on March 16, each accompanied by my thoughts on why we love singing together, and why we love singing that day’s music.

“Summer passed, and, with it, the promise of our 2020-21 Season. We found ourselves a part of social uprising, of a national reconciling, a previously unimaginable political contest, and a pandemic that had hold of the country and would not let go. As we looked at a completely re-imagined Fall and Winter, we wanted to ensure we remember this time, a time when routines and rituals like Rising w/ The Crossing felt like rudders in stormy seas, when communication was a gift, and when music…That time when music reminded us that we must never take it for granted. It is the bread by which we commune and the wine by which we are reminded that truth matters, words matter, Black Lives Matter, and singing together matters.”

TRACKLIST

1. The Crossing - Protect Yourself from Infection
2. The Crossing - Lost Forever (Live)
3. Kelly Ann Bixby - Translation (Live)
4. Kelly Ann Bixby - No. 4, Ad latus [Live]
5. The Crossing - No 1, First Pink (Live)
6. The Crossing - No. 1, Our Land with Peace [Live]
7. The Crossing - Lincoln (Live)
8. The Crossing - No. 4, Keep Us Free [Live]
9. The Crossing - What It Might Say (Live)
10. Rebecca Siler - No. 2, Ad genua [Live]
11. The Crossing - Earth Teach Me Quiet (Live)
12. The Crossing - Horo horo hata hata (Live)



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