The Month of Moderns 2021
Singing outside about our inner lives
Socially-distant, safe, intimate
Presented by The Crossing and The Annenberg Center
with Ars Nova Workshop
in New Hope, West Philadelphia, and Germantown
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One year after "the cancellation of everything": The Month of Moderns 2021, The Crossing re-imagined, reflecting, rejuvenated. A complete MoM, with three different programs of new works born of our pandemic-time lives. Works of isolation, of social unrest and justice, of a divided nation, and of optimism and compassion: honoring the life of Breonna Taylor; setting poetry of grief from 2019 Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Forrest Gander; expanding on our pre-election series of 2020; and reprising our home-generated bucolic elegy, The Forest. Walks in the woods, in a cemetery, and a picnic on the lawn of an arboretum: venues through which we celebrate the rich and yet complex history of Philadelphia, our home.
All concerts in The Month of Moderns 2021 are performed with singers and audience spatially distanced, using our Echoes Amplification Kits, which allow an intimate aural experience, while observing pandemic-time protocols.
Tickets will be available May 11th
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MoM 1: The Forest
by Donald Nally and Kevin Vondrak
a reprise of our (quickly sold-out) October concerts
Performances June 3-6, 2021
a linear work, which the audience walks through, safe and social-distanced,
at Bowman's Hill Wildflower Preserve, New Hope, PA
a bucolic ⅓ mile stroll through Penn’s Woods at this beautiful local treasure
The Forest is based on the writings of members of The Crossing. Their words reflect the experience of isolation and aloneness in lockdown, which resulted in the total absence of work, income, art, singing, and contact. Performed in a wooded area, the trees serve as a metaphor for the experience of singers in normal and pandemic times; a singular being with its own personality appearing to be alone, yet deeply connected at the root level and relying on each other for strength and support, contributing their energy to the health of the whole.
Thursday, June 3, 2021 6:30pm
Friday, June 4, 2021, 6:30pm
Saturday, June 5, 2021, 4:00pm
Saturday, June 5, 2021, 6:30pm
Sunday, June 6, 2021, 6:30pm
Tickets will be available May 11th
There is a forest which isn’t a forest, just a collection of trees.
"What kind of singing matters?" – that’s what I asked.
While I am drawn to all ages and kinds, from maple sprouts to towering sequoias with their crowns wreathed in fog, I am especially drawn to the ancient, battered ones, the survivors.
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MoM 2: "we got time."
world premiere by Matana Roberts
a work honoring the life of Breonna Taylor
Presented with Ars Nova Workshop
Performances June 11-13
a linear work, which the audience walks through, safe and social-distanced,
at The Woodlands in West Philadelphia
a winding ⅓ mile course through the trees and markers of this historic cemetery
Composer, sound artist, and jazz saxophonist Matana Roberts has created a collage of sound that reflects on the world we live in, positioning the loss of Breonna Taylor at the center of that world, as we ask questions about the meaning of words familiar to us through historic documents – the United States’ Declaration of Independence, the Preamble and First Amendment to our Constitution – the 19th-century hymn Pass Over to The Rest, event data related to Ms. Taylor’s death, and a roll call of the names of Black women lost in ways similarly. Matana writes of this sound quilt as a communal practice: “a scrap alone is of no use, but a scrap bounded together by others of its diverse kind will move beyond anything that it ever thought it could be.”
Friday, June 11, 2021, 6:30pm
Saturday, June 12, 2021, 3:30pm
Saturday, June 12, 2021, 6:30pm
Sunday, June 13, 2021, 3:00pm
Tickets will be available May 11th
When grand jurors were told they wouldn’t be able to watch all the body
camera footage due to time restraints, one juror shot back, loudly,
“We! Got! Time!”
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MoM 3: At Which Point
a new work by Wang Lu, based on poetry of 2019 Pulitzer winner Forrest Gander
plus Shift, by Ayanna Woods; an expanded version of our 2020 commission
Performances June 18-19
a picnic atmosphere, safe and socially-distanced with the audience distanced in pods, surrounded – from afar – by the singers and Echoes
at Awbury Arboretum in Germantown
a seated performance (bring your chairs and blankets!)
on the rolling landscape of this historic estate
Another new work: composed by Wang Lu for the specific scenario of our socially-distant, amplified performance. This premiere holds great promise for a journey of colors coming from Lu’s truly inspired and personal sound world, as she explores the emotional valleys and peaks of 2019 Pulitzer-winner Forrest Gander’s raw, brutally honest poetry.
Ayanna Woods’ words and music struck us with their power last November and stayed with us in such a way that we were inspired to ask her to expand her brief work Shift into a multi-movement suite based in her own words: “I want...a monument we grasp and heave and bend in a long arc/bursting through the cracks in the story you tell, America.” There is energy and rhythm and a drive upward toward...is it hope, or demand?
MoM 3 will close with the US premiere of David Lang's "the sense of senses," a co-commission of The Crossing, The Company of Music (Vienna), and the Fisher Center at Bard College. The work distills all the senses mentioned in the Song of Songs, rearranged by sense, so that all seen things are together, all heard things together, etc. They are then presented from far to near – sight to sound to smell to feeling to taste. The result is a growing intensity as the senses come closer – an apt reminder of the power of sense as we emerge from an era in which so much of that very-human connection has been absent.
Friday, June 18, 2021, 6:30pm
Saturday, June 19, 2021, 6:30pm
Tickets will be available May 11th
At which point, coming to, I knew I'd pay the whole flag-pull fare. At which point the driver turned and said it doesn't need to be your fault for it to break you.
At which point without any lurching commencement,
he began to play a vulture-bone flute.
At which point I grew old and it was like ripping open the beehive with my hands again.
(Forrest Gander’s “Beckoned,” from Be With)
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Header art "Bowman's Tiger Tree" (2021) by Steven Bradshaw and Nyahzul C. Blanco
MoM1 art "Bowman's Crab Path" (2021) by Steven Bradshaw and Nyahzul C. Blanco
MoM2 art "Woodlands Fox Map" (2021) by Steven Bradshaw and Joka
MoM3 art "Awbury Giraffe Mic Tree" (2021) by Steven Bradshaw and Joka
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New music only happens through your support. |
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