The Forest @ Caramoor

with Echoes Amplification Kits

Saturday, July 3, 2021 @ 6:00pm
Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts
149 Girdle Ridge Road, Katonah, NY 10536

Program:

Kevin Vondrak & Donald Nally – The Forest (2020)

Performed with Echoes Amplification Kits

Caramoor is an oasis of discovered vistas and stunning surprises as you turn each corner of The Forest's path; the singers of The Crossing merge with the trees, plants, and sprawling lawns of this iconic estate in an organic way that allows the words of our pandemic experience to appear to emerge from the earth and hang in the branches above. It is a perfect marriage of music, ensemble, and venue for our first visit to Caramoor - as memorable for our ensemble as we hope it will be for listeners.

The Forest is The Crossing’s response to the pandemic of 2020. We could not sing safely indoors, so we rethought what we do, why, and how, moving outdoors to sing, listen, and connect. Listeners ‘walk through’ the performance as the speakers of Echoes, positioned close to the  path, create an intimate experience, reestablishing the broken relationships between singers and audience members while telling our story – the story of a planet in crisis, its people and its forests in peril. Yet, in that curiously human way, the story is one of hope and of a way forward.

The Forest focuses on the symbiotic relationship between individual trees and the forest – a metaphor for the relationship between each singer and our ensemble. The libretto is formed of our singers’ reflections on their isolation during COVID-Time, overlaid with texts from Scott Russell Sanders’ essay "Mind in the Forest." The music was developed (perhaps it is more accurate to say, “found within the words of the singers") by Donald and Kevin.