Rising w/ The Crossing
Our 22nd Album (and first LIVE album)
on New Focus Recordings
Rising w/ The Crossing collects 12 live concert recordings from The Crossing's archives, which were featured in our pandemic-inspired project of the same name. Included are collaborations with International Contemporary Ensemble and rare recordings of The Crossing singing early music from Buxtehude's Membra Jesu nostri with Quicksilver Baroque, alongside newly released recordings by Ted Hearne, David Lang, Eriks Esenvalds, Santa Ratniece, Paul Fowler, and Joby Talbot.
The first 60 chapters of Rising w/ The Crossing ran from March to June. The series gained national attention and was featured in Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, Washington Post, and Performance Today; it has been archived by The Library of Congress as a cultural artifact as an "important part of this collection and the historical record."
Donald Nally writes:
‘We really love singing together.’ These are the words that came to me when viewing a Zoom screen of faces of my colleagues, as we let them know we couldn’t sing together in March. Singing had been determined an unsafe activity at the outset of the coronavirus pandemic. Our response to this grief was to ask how we can continue expressing and gathering, how we can hold the community together, how we can ensure artists can pay their rents, how we can use what resources we have to rethink who we are at this moment. One of those resources is an archive of 15 years of live concert recordings; musical moments in our history that stand out as special or loved or fun or challenging or just calm at a time when calmness stands in relief against a background of chaos moving into the foreground at the beginning of the Great Shut Down. We wanted to feel like we were walking through this together, waking up and starting our day together, Rising w/ The Crossing. So, we began sharing these archived moments on March 16, each accompanied by my thoughts on why we love singing together, and why we love singing that day’s music.
Summer passed, and, with it, the promise of our 2020-2021 Season. We found ourselves a part of social uprising, of a national reconciling, a previously unimaginable political contest, and a pandemic that had hold of the country and would not let go. As we looked at a completely re-imagined Fall and Winter, we wanted to ensure we remember this time, a time when routines and rituals like Rising w/ The Crossing felt like rudders in stormy seas, when communication was a gift, and when music… That time when music reminded us that we must never take it for granted. It is the bread by which we commune and the wine by which we are reminded that truth matters, words matter, Black Lives Matter, and singing together matters.
Rising w/ The Crossing Track List
1. David Lang (b. 1957) – protect yourself from infection (2019) [5:30]
2. Joby Talbot (b. 1971) – Lost Forever (2000) [3:46]
3. Ēriks Ešenvalds (b. 1977) – Translation (2016) [4:25]
4. Dieterich Buxtehude (1637-1707) – IV. Ad latus from Membra Jesu nostri, BuxWV 75 (1680) [8:10]
5. Paul Fowler (b. 1978) – First Pink (2016) [3:54]
6. David Lang – I. our land with peace from the national anthems (2014) [5:17]
7. Alex Berko (b. 1995) – Lincoln (2018) [5:45]
8. David Lang – IV. keep us free from the national anthems (2014) [4:09]
9. Ted Hearne (b.1982) – What it might say (2016) [4:34]
10. Dieterich Buxtehude – II. Ad genua from Membra Jesu nostri, BuxWV 75 (1680) [8:00]
11. Ēriks Ešenvalds – Earth Teach Me Quiet (2013) [7:18]
12. Santa Ratniece (b. 1977)– Horo horo hata hata (2008) [10:02]
*cover art by Steven Bradshaw with Nyahzul C. Blanco