Over the last year, the world has seen that it鈥檚 possible to do many jobs in relative isolation. Singing in a professional choir is not one of them.
That鈥檚 why Donald Nally, artistic director of the Philadelphia-based choral ensemble , has spent most of the last year reinventing how the choir works together and reaches its audience amid pandemic safety protocols.
The results have included The Crossing鈥檚 release of a number of cutting-edge films and of the CD Rising w/ The Crossing. The recording documents the choir鈥檚 efforts to connect electronically with its audience during the spring 2020 pandemic lockdown and includes performances from the choir鈥檚 archive.
The project that led to the CD began unfolding when the March 2020 lockdown forced The Crossing off the stage and away from its audience.
鈥淲e needed to come up right away with some way to communicate and to keep the fire going and to have a multipronged plan to get work and art to singers because they weren鈥檛 going to be able to do things in conventional ways,鈥� said Nally in a recent interview.
Nally reached back into the choir鈥檚 archive and released online a different recorded performance every morning at dawn for 12 weeks, then one performance each week for another 12 weeks. As Nally explains in our interview, that series, Rising w/ The Crossing, was the basis for the CD of the same title.
鈥淲e were really fortunate to have this as a memory and a commemoration of this really, really difficult time for singers, and also as something that gets some stuff out there that we wouldn鈥檛 ordinarily get out there,鈥� Nally said.
The recording marks the CD release of David Lang鈥檚 鈥減rotect yourself from infection,鈥� a work The Crossing recorded in 2019 for a project at Philadelphia鈥檚 M眉tter Museum commemorating Philadelphia鈥檚 heavy death toll in the 1918-20 Spanish flu pandemic. The work is based on a text drawn from a 1918 U.S. government-issued document on how to avoid spreading Spanish flu. Singers also sing the names of Philadelphians who died in that pandemic.
Rising w/ The Crossing also features one of the choir鈥檚 rare performances of early music 鈥� Buxtehude鈥檚 cantata Membra Jesu nostri (The Limbs of Our Jesus). The Crossing performed the work with the early music ensemble Quicksilver in 2016 as part of a project to catalyze new works in response to the suffering of others.
Beyond Rising w/ The Crossing and the choir鈥檚 projects exclusively for video, Nally discusses in our interview The Crossing鈥檚 innovative system for performing safely to in-person audiences. In the choir鈥檚 film The Forest, the group鈥檚 speaker system, called 鈥淓choes,鈥� transmits the music the singers sing outdoors while spaced far apart along a path through a forest. Audience members can walk physically distanced along that path and listen to the choir
The speakers will enable The Crossing also to perform new commissioned works during the choir鈥檚 Month of Moderns scheduled for June 2021.
If the pandemic has an upside for The Crossing, it鈥檚 that the technology the pandemic has forced the coir to rely on, has also opened new creative possibilities.
鈥淚t鈥檚 pushed us to a place we never thought we鈥檇 go,鈥� said Nally. 鈥淚t鈥檚 been really great.鈥�
INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT:
Jennifer Hambrick: I鈥檓 Jennifer Hambrick, midday host of Classical 101, 星空无限传媒, in Columbus. Donald Nally, artistic director of the Philadelphia-based choral ensemble The Crossing, joined me on Zoom for a conversation about their recording Rising w/ The Crossing, which emerged during and because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Hambrick: How did this recording come about?
Donald Nally: We were supposed to take a new piece of Michael Gordon to the Annenberg Center in Philadelphia and the Carnegie Hall at the end of March last year, as well as go to Westminster Choir College. And of course, all of them got canceled within, like, three days. One day I was hugging my friends and all this kind of other stuff, and two days later, it鈥檚 like nobody鈥檚 talking to anybody. So of course, everything for the singers鈥� world, it just collapsed, it disintegrated. Everything. Because singing is deemed to be unsafe because we spit a lot when we sing. So we needed to come up right away with some way to communicate and to keep the fire going and to have a multipronged plan to get work and art to singers, because they weren鈥檛 going to be able to do things in conventional ways. The first way was to draw on our archives from the last decade or and to make a series every morning at sunrise called Rising w/ The Crossing. And so it landed in your inbox, because the whole thing was, we really love singing together and we miss it. And after we did the 60, we began talking about, well maybe we should make a CD to remember this time, Called Rising w/ The Crossing. We鈥檒l take our 12 pieces that really stand out or had particular impact on people who wrote back to us or whatever, and make this CD and release it at the end of the year. And at that point we were thinking, at the end of the year, when we鈥檙e all gathering for Christmas concerts. So, how silly of us. But at any rate, we were really fortunate to also have this as a memory and a commemoration of this really, really difficult time for singers. And also as something that gets some stuff out there that we wouldn鈥檛 ordinarily get out there, because we鈥檝e never done a CD of live performances before.
Hambrick: The first track on the recording is a work by David Lang called protect yourself from infection, which sounds as though it could have been tailed made for this recording. If you would, tell us about this piece.
Nally: We recorded that in the summer of 2019 and that was for a project at the M眉tter Museum in Philadelphia was putting together to commemorate the 1918 Spanish flu epidemic. Remember, of course, in the summer of 2019, nobody was thinking anything like this could happen. So they worked with this group called Blast Theory from London, and they came up with this project that they were going to make a parade. Because the reason why it was so bad in 1918 in Philadelphia was because they had held a Liberty Bonds parade they knew they shouldn鈥檛 hold, but they felt this pressure, the war effort and all this kind of stuff. And they held this parade and the flu went crazy. And so they wanted to commemorate this, they wanted to commemorate health care workers 鈥� health care workers then, health care workers today. So David wrote this score, but it鈥檚 really just a series of like 28 phrases that are taken from a health manual from the government from 1918, and they鈥檙e designed to be a part of this parade. So it鈥檚 not really a piece. And when we recorded it, we giggled a lot. Like, you know, 鈥渁void the nose and throat secretions of others,鈥� you know, 鈥渒eep calm and don鈥檛 get hysterical鈥� 鈥� these things seem so quaint to us, you know? Of course, these are the types of things we鈥檝e being saying to each other now for a year. The other element to this is that all of the singers recorded about 30 names of people who died in the 1918 (Spanish flu pandemic). And David made this really creative and clever and imaginative SoundCloud so that you hear these names floating in the air, and then you hear these phrases about how to take care of yourself. So we made about a six-minute piece with David and our sound designer Paul Vasquez, and then that鈥檚 the lead on Rising w/ The Crossing. So a long story, but a crazy coincidence.
Hambrick: How did you come to select some of the other works on Rising w/ The Crossing?
Nally: There鈥檚 a few pieces on here that are from our set called Jeff Quartets and this is a commissioning project from 鈥� it was premiered in 2016 and it was in memory of the life of my co-founder Jeff Dinsmore, who passed away suddenly in front of us. We were about to begin rehearsals at the LA Philharmonic at Disney Hall in April of 2014, and he just had a heart attack, and that was it. It was very, very difficult. It was with us in the room, but also, he was the marketing person and head of the board and a tenor. I talked to Jeff six, seven times a day every day. So it was really tough, and it really changed the direction of The Crossing. So we went to 15 composers and asked them if they would write a short piece, three to five minutes long, for only four voices and make a set out of these. So three of them Translation from Eriks Esenvalds, which is a beautiful, beautiful piece 鈥� well, they all are, really 鈥� What it might say by Ted Hearn, and First Pink by Paul Fowler 鈥� and they鈥檙e all from that set. And then there鈥檚 a very 鈥� for us 鈥� a very unusual inclusion, which is that we sing only contemporary music and mostly pieces that are written for us. So this CD gave us the opportunity to include some pieces that weren鈥檛 written for us that we really loved performing, and the very rare occasion of us singing early music. So there鈥檚 Buxtehude鈥檚 cantata from 1680, Membra Jesu nostri, that we made a huge project out of also in 2016 called Seven Responses 鈥� seven different composers responding to Buxtehude鈥檚 seven-movement cantata about how we respond to the suffering of others. Well, we鈥檇 never done anything with those recordings. Wed released the contemporary ones, but we never did anything with the early ones. And so this allowed us to put some early music on there, which is really fun. We love doing it, we just don鈥檛 normally do it.
Hambrick: You and the singers of The Crossing were able to get back together again late last summer in Big Sky, Montana, for the first time since the pandemic struck the U.S. What were some of the first projects you worked on after you came back together?
Nally: we took the singers responses to what it was like to experience this kind of isolation and we made it 鈥� we developed with our sound designer and my assistant conductor, Kevin Vondrak, we developed this system of speakers that each singer has a six-foot pillar speaker, a looper and a mixer and long, long cables. And we鈥檝e created pieces so that people can, at a very safe distance, walk through a piece that鈥檚 designed to be experienced linearly which we鈥檙e singing maybe 25 feet off the path and maybe 30 feet away from each other. But the pillar speakers are right on the path, so it鈥檚 very intimate, there鈥檚 a lot of whispering. It鈥檚 an incredibly, incredibly close, intimate experience, but nobody鈥檚 unsafe, and the audience is timed entry, like you would have maybe at a museum, and very spread out from each other. So everybody鈥檚 completely separate, but you鈥檙e experiencing live singing. And the first piece that we did was called The Forest, and it was written by Kevin and me. And you actually go out to a forest and you walk through the forest. And there鈥檚 these speakers that, like, sort of 鈥� it鈥檚 really cool because of the attenuation of the trees and the speakers kind of work together, and then there鈥檚 people who are also vertical and tall and they鈥檙e also in the forest. The whole thing is a metaphor for the ways in which forests are communities that even though we didn鈥檛 really realize this until recently, they talk to each other, they can help each other, they can send energy to one tree or take it away, if it鈥檚 time for that tree to no longer be there. And choirs are the same way, right? They鈥檙e individuals, but they鈥檙e actually completely depending on each other for the sounds and the textures and all that kind of stuff. And so that whole idea has been driving our ideas about creating new pieces.
Hambrick: You mentioned earlier in our conversation that your recording Rising with The Crossing really marks this particular moment in the choir鈥檚 history 鈥� the choir鈥檚 time away from singing together. Are there other ways in which you would say this particular recording is sort of autobiographical for The Crossing?
Nally: The CD has a kind of loose 鈥� there are some loose themes in it about the ways in which countries view themselves and our relationship to the earth and the environment. And so I think it just reflects what The Crossing鈥檚 values are, because many, many, many of our commissions are involved in those types of issues. So moving forward there鈥檚 a renewed commitment to that. We do want to talk about stuff like that in our music.
Hambrick: I鈥檝e been speaking with Donald Nally, artistic director of The Crossing, about their recording Rising w/ The Crossing. Thank you so much for your time today.
Nally: Thank you.
Hambrick: I鈥檓 Jennifer Hambrick with Classical 101, 星空无限传媒, in Columbus.
