Rising w/ The Crossing—The Crossing/Donald Nally; Quicksilver (New Focus Recordings)
The Crossing is a Grammy-winning professional chamber choir based in Philadelphia and dedicated to new music. The ensemble’s 22nd commercial album features live concert recordings from The Crossing’s archives, chosen by conductor Donald Nally for a 12-week series that ran in 2020 just as COVID-19 was crushing normalcy and lives across the globe. The series featured a daily reflection from Nally on the process and environment of creation and performance during those dark days, gaining national attention from The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Performance Today. The Library of Congress archived it as a cultural artifact. Donald Nally describes Rising w/ The Crossing as “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…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.” The program includes new works by David Lang, Joby Talbot, Eriks Esenvalds, and Paul Fowler, along with two sections of Dieterich Buxtehude’s 1680 cycle Membra Jesu Nostri, meditations inspired by reflections on specific parts of the body of Jesus. A sense of healing and hope pervades this remarkable disc. (Note: the link sends you to the website of New Focus Recordings.)