The Crossing Awarded $360,000 Grant
from The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage
in support of Farming
a concert-length work by Ted Hearne
to be premiered Summer 2023
at Kings Oaks Farm in Bucks County, Pennsylvania
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The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage today announces a major grant of $300,000 to The Crossing in support of Farming, a concert-length musical work by frequent collaborator, composer Ted Hearne, to be premiered in Summer 2023. The new work, which addresses food production and its effects on the environment and individuals, will be performed in a setting new to the ensemble: Kings Oaks Farm in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. This sustainable farm retains the agronomical concerns of centuries past and reflects Donald's formative upbringing in rural Pennsylvania – experiences seminal to this project’s inception. The project also includes a studio recording that will live on in a digital format, and a film of the outdoor, dusk performance.
Farming is The Crossing’s fifth major project to receive such support from The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage, dating back to Seneca Sounds in 2011, followed by The Gulf (between you and me) in 2013, Seven Responses in 2016, and Aniara in 2019. Pew has also gifted The Crossing with an additional $60,000 as unrestricted general operating support.
Donald reflected on the latest support from The Center:
“The Crossing has grown in imagination, concept, and, indeed, size through the visionary support of The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage. We are grateful and humbled to be included in this year’s grantees – a list of amazingly creative minds and organizations that makes us once again feel so fortunate to make our home in Philadelphia.”
Following a practice familiar to Ted Hearne – as in such works as Place, The Source, and his Pulitzer Prize-finalist Sound from the Bench, a Crossing co-commission – the libretto will be developed from original source material, with input from Nally and director Kaneza Schaal, combining these materials with the stories of those who farm, receive from farms, and who fuel controversy through corporate interests. The sound world of singing and the farm will be enhanced by six instrumentalists, expanding the color palette and making volume an element of both consonance and dissonance with the surroundings, as curated by The Crossing’s in-house sound designer Paul Vazquez.
Through the work of lighting designer Pablo Santiago, the performers of Farming will emerge from the natural light of dusk into focus as the sun sets and the farm returns to darkness. The sound, lighting, staging, music, and words will all remind us of our location and our proximity to the food source (at the audience’s feet and hands), surrounded by our roots: literally, considering the roots that feed plants and the roots of our farming and our dependence on it. The audience will exit Farming, walking with the performers through the field to the farmhouse, with the smells and sounds of a Pennsylvania crop in late June, Hearne’s music giving way to the music of the farm at night.
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Major support for Farming has been provided by
The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage
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New music only happens through your support. |
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