The Crossing: Born: The Music of Edie Hill and Michael Gilbertson
Navona Records

Led by conductor Donald Nally, The Crossing adds to its remarkable discography with another fine recording, this one featuring works by Edie Hill (b. 1962) and Michael Gilbertson (b. 1987). Each release by the chamber choir distinguishes itself from its predecessors, and Born, recorded in August 2021, is no different. Even structurally, it stands apart, framing it does Hill's multi-part Spectral Spirits with two compelling works by Gilbertson, Born and Returning. A commission by The Crossing that was premiered in 2019, Hill's avian-inspired tapestry is described by its creator as a “memorial to lost birds,” four extinct species in particular. Premiered by The Crossing two years earlier, Born is also a commission, this one by Nally and his spouse Steven Hyder in memory of Donald's mother. However different the two works might seem with respect to subject matter, both explore issues of love, loss, longing, and relationships, be it to nature or other human beings. As always, the ensemble illuminates the material with singing that's ravishing and riveting.

With text by Wislawa Szymborska set to Gilbertson's music, Born unfolds across ten moving minutes, its words reflecting on life's cycles. The way the group's voices blend and then splinter into separate strands is stirring, and the entwining of male and female voices as the work moves towards its climax is powerful. Patiently progressing from a delicate murmur to eerie chromatic harmonizing and a conclusion that's both celebratory and elegiac, Born makes for a haunting opener.

Whereas Born is a single-movement meditation, Hill's Spectral Spirits is complex in structure. Words by Holly J. Hughes, Henry David Thoreau, Gert Goebel, Christopher Cokinos, Lucien M. Turner, Paul A. Johnsgard, and Alexander Wilson are woven into a thirteen-part design that sees four bird types, Passenger Pigeon, Carolina Parakeet, Eskimo Curlew, and Ivory-Billed Woodpecker, addressed in three sections apiece, the first an eyewitness account, the second a formal identification including the formal Latin name, and the third a personalized excerpt from Hughes' poetry book Passings (her account of the Passenger Pigeon, for instance, comes from a study of an Audubon painting). In accordance with that design, elaborate ensemble vocal passages are interspersed with short, unaccompanied solo parts for the eyewitness and naming segments, the result a presentation that's consistently beguiling. The soloists acquit themselves excellently, with Maren Montalbano, Rebecca Myers, James Reese, and Dominic German making strong impressions.

The composer rightfully captures the experience of listening to the work as one involving an initial “emotional sequence of falling in love with a bird, followed by grieving its loss.” Spectral Spirits also, however, considers the part humans play in animal extinction, with Hill lamenting how we brazenly destroy nature and obliterate animal species in the name of so-called progress. Hill's elegy is affecting in accentuating the losses that accrue from such habitual modes of thinking and operating. After listening to this mesmerizing construction, we would do well to attend to the words Montalbano and the others deliver in the work's prelude, “Take note. These birds are still singing to us. We must listen.”

Setting music to words by Kai Hoffman-Krull, Gilbertson concludes the release with the two-part Returning, its textual focus the biblical story of David and Jonathan from the Hebrew Bible and presented as an unspoken conversation between them. As described by Hoffman-Krull, “Jonathan's words to David are spoken internally as he prepares to fight the Philistines at Mt. Gilboa; David's words are spoken to Jonathan's memory after his passing at the battle.” A third, omniscient voice is also present to offer reflections on the nature of love. Like Born, each of the movements is in the nine-minute range, the first part, “What knits us,” casting a potent spell as it oscillates between hushed musings and ecstatic declamations, and the second, “I thought of staying quiet,” a dynamic and ethereal supernova.

September 2022