The Crossing: The Arc in the Sky
Navona Records

The Crossing: Evolutionary Spirits
Navona Records

As a physical act, we tend to think of a crossing in largely horizontal terms, the movement from one locale to another. When it comes to The Crossing, on the other hand, the new music chamber choir conducted by creative director Donald Nally, ascension would seem to be the more relevant direction, given how visibly the group's profile has risen in recent years. Certainly the respective 2018 and 2019 'Best Choral Performance' Grammy Awards it received for Gavin Bryars' The Fifth Century and Lansing McLoskey's Zealot Canticles are a factor, but its lauded recordings and the plethora of composers eager to write material for the choir are also responsible for the group's heightened profile. With dozens of commissions and numerous releases under its belt, the group appears to be in its artistic and professional prime, recognized with awards for its work, admired for its virtuosity and versatility, and sought after as a collaborator by the composing elite. An outfit, in short, that's come a remarkably long way since its first performance in the fall of 2005.

Anyone new to The Crossing could do worse than begin with these recent releases, one featuring pieces by six contemporary composers, the other a large-scale work by Kile Smith. Evidence of the group's warm, pristine vocal sound is abundant, yet it's never pretty for pretty's sake: where beauty's called for, the ensemble responds in kind, but when the music turns tumultuous, the singing's suitably urgent. A case in point, Ted Hearne's Animals, in which the group generates howls and hisses in material that's, in part, a response to President Trump's characterization of undocumented immigrants as animals. That's not the only work that reflects The Crossing's social conscience, but the group's careful to not cross the line into stridency and didacticism. Issues are raised to induce reflection rather than browbeat.

A number of things make Evolutionary Spirits an attractive entry point. Enhancing the cohesiveness of the presentation is the fact that three of the six composers are represented by multiple pieces, two in two cases (Edie Hill, Christopher J. Hoh) and three in the other (Gregory W. Brown); concision is also present, with all tracks three to eight minutes in duration. The other composers, James Shrader, Bruce Babcock, and Jonathan Sheffer, are represented by single-movement works. Thematically, there's unity, too: even though a diverse range of subject matter is explored, each work grapples with some aspect of the human condition.

Never does the choir lose its fundamental command of pitch and precision. Often the male and female voices appear as distinct, interlocking groupings, the fundamental contrast between them one of the identifying features of its sound. The release takes its title from a line in Hill's opening Poem for 2084, a prototypically splendid example of The Crossing's artistry. For six minutes, the male and female singers swell in glorious harmony; clarity of intonation and diction is omnipresent regardless of whether the voices loudly declaim or drop to a whisper. With the vocals soaring, Hill's piece (with text by Joan Wolf Prefontaine) exudes an ethereal mysticism as it muses on the state of the world.

The sole multi-movement work performed, Brown's three-part Vida Aquam alternates between Latin and English texts, with John Grecia's piano accompaniment a fine complement to the choir's tapestry. Brown's two other contributions, the serene Entrai, pastores, entrai (Enter, shepherds, enter) and stirring Five Women Bathing in Moonlight (text by Richard Wilbur), exude the grace and purity of ancient choral music. Complementing the Biblical character of Entrai, pastores, entrai is Shrader's Angels Sang with Mirth and Glee, whose text dates from about 1500 and is possibly the earliest Christmas carol. Formally a macaronic carol that follows an English verse with a Latin refrain (in this instance, “In excelcis Gloria”), the harmonious setting conveys a celebratory, uplifting spirit in a concise, three-minute package. Also succinct, albeit in a slightly different way, is Babcock's meditative Be Still, whose entire text consists of eight words from Psalm 46:10 (“Be still and know that I am God”); with the word count so small, the listener attends almost exclusively to the melodies and vocal performance and derives an even greater appreciation for the vocal facility of The Crossing.

A religious dimension also permeates Sheffer's y'did nefesh, which draws on an ancient Hebrew prayer and offers a plea for union with the Divine. The Crossing's emotional rendering of this work, sung in Hebrew and overflowing with longing, communicates with an immediacy that transcends language. With My Mistress' Eyes rooting itself in Shakespeare's well-known sonnet and To Elliott an homage to composer Elliott Carter, Hoh's works move the recording away from the religious-themed material. For the latter, he altered the line “Charm me asleep” from Robert Herrick's “To Music, to becalm his Fever” to “Charm me awake” to accentuate music's capacity to transport the listener, the result a choral madrigal with no small amount of charm. Consistent with the progression of the Bard's text, Hoh has the music make an abrupt about-face when the initial presentation of sopranos and altos accompanied by tenors and basses is reversed.

Based on writings by Robert Lax (1915–2000), The Arc in the Sky, Kile Smith's sixth commission from The Crossing, is brought to life with an amazing performance by the unaccompanied, twenty-five-member choir. That Lax drew for inspiration from, among other things, jazz and the Beats is shown in the rhythms and fragmented verse forms that dominate the work's text. Certainly the highly personalized style of his writing does much to give the work character. For him, jazz was something of a metaphor for life, the way it unfolds like an improvisation undertaken with others and God. His words benefit from both Smith's sixty-five-minute treatment, which imbues the texts with musicality, and The Crossing's performance of the three-part, nine-movement work, which casts the material of both artists in an ultra-flattering light.

“why did they all shout” initiates the opening part, Jazz, effervescently, the voices rising ecstatically as they celebrate the joy of performer (Louis Armstrong in this case) and listener rejoicing in musical communion (“to be that high / is to be at one / with the source / of all true / blessings”). Restrained by comparison is the graceful second movement, “there are not many songs,” which unfurls in a slow, gentle hush, jazz not noticeably present but for a subtle blues feel that emerges during one transition. The almost ten-minute “Cherubim & Palm-Trees” finds Lax speaking to Jack Kerouac, the rhythmic vocal lines delivered with jazz-like syncopation and the music alternating between hymn-like calm and exuberance. Helping to distinguish the movement from others is the emergence of a solo quartet (Elisa Sutherland, Michael Jones, Dimitri German, Katy Avery) that entrances the listener with the interlacing of the individual singers' voices.

July 2019