The Crossing & Donald Nally - At Which Point (2025) [Hi-Res]

Philadelphia based contemporary choral ensemble The Crossing releases their latest collection of premiere recordings of works written for them by Wang Lu, Ayanna Woods, and Tawnie Olson. The ensemble highlights its versatility in works that celebrate lush vocal harmonies and creative approaches to writing for ensemble voices.

The Philadelphia based contemporary choir The Crossing is intrepid in their commissioning activities, advocating both for contemporary music in general, and works that speak to social issues more specifically. With this latest release of three new works written for them by Ayanna Woods, Wang Lu, and Tawnie Olson, the ensemble turns its attention to questions surrounding the artistic and creative experience in contemporary society, giving musical space to pieces that endeavor to draw the listener into internal relationships to one’s own work and persistent renewal of purpose.

Ayanna Woods’ Infinite Body examines the impact unseen societal forces have on our bodies and spirits. Specifically focusing on the pressures of inhabiting a late capitalist system and contorting ourselves to navigate through it, Woods’ four movement work features her own texts that engage both the interior and exterior spaces of the self. The opening movement, “Infinite Growth,” alternates between pulsating sung melismas in the tutti choir, and lyrical rumination in a solo voice. “One Body” is a vigorous exhortation towards individual productivity and efficiency, a caffeinated, rhythmic celebration of getting things done whose satirical stance is only lightly veiled. “Do Be Do” thoughtfully asks the question, “What do you do, Do you worry about falling short?” while pointing to the beauties around us—the falling water and the wind blowing in the leaves. “Golden Hour” celebrates the power of human connection, gradually building through an initial quiet halo, richly voiced harmonies, weaving part singing, and finally arriving at an expansive, cathartic passage for a subset of the ensemble singing above a sustained pedal chord in the rest of the choir.

At Which Point by Wang Lu is a three movement setting of two evocative, narrative driven poems by Forrest Gander. The piece opens with a wordless “Prologue” that introduces a sonic vocabulary of quick sliding gestures, trills, and ominous thickly voiced chords that set an unsettled scene. “Beckoned” guides the listener through a surreal encounter with a swarm of stinging bees and a cab ride from a flute playing driver. Wang Lu expertly word paints the quixotic text with an engaging range of vocal techniques, powerful pillars of vertical harmony, and dramatic, foregrounded solo moments. The final movement, “The Sounding,” reaches for more sensual, luminous textures, capturing the poetry’s focus on fleeting moments charged with quiet meaning. For the end of the movement, the ensemble uses mouth harps and Echoes amplification kits to create otherworldly, three dimensional textures. Throughout At Which Point, Wang Lu finds fresh, striking ways to use the voice that create a distinct sound while still taking advantage of the uniquely expressive capacity of ensemble voices.

Commissioned by the Barlow Endowment, Tawnie Olson’s Beloved of the Sky sets five passages from a journal by Canadian author and artist Emily Carr about her working process. Known for her striking paintings of landscapes and Indigenous cultures of the Pacific Northwest, Carr worked outside of the spotlight of the major art centers, focusing on subjects that were not necessarily in vogue but that clearly captivated her creative attention. It is this captivation that Olson focuses on in her setting. “I went down deep” opens with a grounded ascending major second in a solo voice, which gradually expands outward as other voices join to thicken the texture, culminating in a higher arrival on the text, “and dug up.” “I woke with this idea…” zeroes in on an aesthetic color strategy, musically capturing the sense of turning around permutations of possibility in one’s mind. “Oh, that lazy, stodgy, lumpy feeling” opens with an annunciatory unison ensemble melody, splitting into an imitative texture briefly, before coming together again for a homophonic multi-voiced texture in the last two phrases. “The subject means little” searches for the ineffable connective glue that propels the creative process forward and that is at the core of artistic work. Short, charged phrases dominate the opening section before a reverent, sustained texture introduces text that invokes a divine presence, before three towering chords usher in a poignant ending solo over a drone. The final movement, “I made a small sketch,” patiently walks the listener through deliberate steps of developing an idea into something larger. Whispered accompaniment supports a solo on the text, “This is thine hour, O Soul, thy free flight into the wordless,” before the choir repeats the words in overlapping phrases. After a sotto voce wordless chorale, the movement returns to its opening text as each voice sustains and joins an accumulating, shimmering final chord.

– Dan Lippel