The Crossing: Lansing McLoskey's Zealot Canticles
Innova Recordings

It would be hard to imagine a better fit for The Crossing than Lansing McLoskey's Zealot Canticles. With conductor and artistic director Donald Nally at the helm, the 2018 Grammy Award-winning chamber choir dedicates itself to performing (and commissioning) contemporary works for choir, many of them informed by timely social issues. A concert-length choral ‘oratorio' for clarinet (Doris Hall-Galuti), string quartet (violinists Rebecca Harris and Mandy Wolman, violist Lorenzo Raval, cellist Arlen Hlusko), and twenty-four-voice choir, McLoskey's twenty-part composition draws from the writings of Wole Soyinka (b. 1934), his Twelve Canticles for the Zealot in particular but also other sources.

A few words about the creative forces involved is appropriate before addressing the work in question. The Crossing isn't a new kid on the block: the group has collaborated with the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), PRISM Saxophone Quartet, and many others; presented more than sixty commissioned world premieres, including works by John Luther Adams, David Lang, Anna Thorvaldsdottir, and Gavin Bryars; and, committed to recording its commissions, has issued fourteen releases. McLoskey's hardly your standard composer either: in the early ‘80s, he was a guitarist and songwriter for San Francisco punk bands, though the seeds for his love of classical music were planted during that time; to date, he's won numerous national and international awards and seen his music appear on Albany Records and WergoSchallplatten, among others.

Soyinka, a Nigerian poet, playwright, novelist, and recipient of the 1986 Nobel Prize for Literature, was arrested and imprisoned in 1967 on a charge of civil defiance after speaking out against the military dictatorship of General Yakubu Gowon, the Nigerian/Biafran civil war, and the genocide of the Igbo people. As mentioned, McLoskey's work is based primarily on Soyinka's 2002 poetry collection, which examines the fanatic's mental state and through which the author makes universal pleas for peace, though other texts are incorporated, too: sections from his book The Man Died, his play Madmen and Specialists, and interviews, lectures, and speeches, much of it commentaries on bigotry and violence. Needless to say, the fragile lines separating tolerance from intolerance and extreme devotion from radicalism are ones still with us today, which certainly bolsters the relevance of Zealot Canticles (see the concluding part, “On fire today,” for the most direct expressions of concern).

With only five musicians accompanying the choir, the work assumes the intimate feel of a chamber piece for choir and instrumentalists. It's also never less than stimulating and engaging, the composer wise to vary the presentation throughout and keep many movements short and to the point. Choir passages and settings featuring individual vocalists intermingle, and two of the twenty parts are brief instrumentals. Hall-Galuti's clarinet playing is magnificent throughout, her contributions to the lengthy ninth part, “Seek havens of peace,” a good illustration, and the strings are also key to the work's design, the violin part in the thirteenth, “I turned to stone” a case in point. As much as the material changes shape from one part to the next, Soyinka's texts act as a strong unifying factor, and as powerful as McLoskey's creation is on purely sonic grounds, its impact is increased dramatically by the substance of Soyinka's writing.

Words associated with renunciation—“I need nothing. I feel nothing. I desire nothing.”—resonate powerfully within the opening part, the choir's subdued expression enhanced by the clarinet's sombre accompaniment. Characteristic of the work as a whole, a noticeable shift in dynamics and presentation occurs when the second part arrives, with in this case a female soprano donning the role of interviewer and a male baritone the respondent Soyinka. It's not uncommon for a hushed passage to be followed by one considerably louder and even violent.

October 2018