The Month of Moderns 2017
The Crossing’s 8th annual festival of new choral music
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MoM 1: ‘mid the steep sky’s commotion
a world premiere from Joshua Stamper
Sunday, June 11 @ 4pm
The Icebox at Crane Arts
1400 N. American St.
Philadelphia, PA 19122
‘mid the steep sky’s commotion is the second chapter of Joshua Stamper’s four-part Elements series, exploring the enigmatic and impenetrable quality of wind, its singular and intimate relationship to the detritus of a city, and the ways in which that detritus exists as an echo of the movements, relationships, and dreams of the city of Philadelphia. Joshua Stamper’s unique, colorful, evolving music captures ‘what the wind says’ in this first collaboration with The Crossing.
“Wind is the epitome of mystery: it is a force of both destruction and preservation; its origins are inscrutable and its destination is unknown. Its presence echoes through our poems and dreams, yet its patterns and path remain impenetrable—invisible save for its effect on the world around it.”
– Joshua Stamper
MoM 2: In Search of Ourselves
an evening of premieres from Brown, Fujikura, Minakakis
Saturday, June 24 @ 8pm
Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill
8855 Germantown Ave.
Philadelphia, PA 19118
The U.S. premiere of a work by Dai Fujikura and a greatly expanded version of Efstratios Minakakis’ breathtaking Crossings (2015) – his musical response to the experience of observing Syrian refugees on the Isle of Lesbos – are balanced with a major new work of Gregory Brown, un/bodying/s. The work explores the history of the displaced populations of Quabbin, the Swift River Valley in Western Massachusetts: the Native Americans moved by incoming Europeans, and then those Europeans relocated by the State when creating the massive reservoir that supplies Boston with water. Gregory and librettist Todd Hearon tell these stories from a variety of perspectives, including the history of the wildlife that, like the human refugees, have fled and since returned to this troubled land.
MoM 3: Anonymous Man
a world premiere from Bang on a Can composer Michael Gordon
Saturday, July 1 @ 8pm
Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill
8855 Germantown Ave.
Philadelphia, PA 19118
Anonymous Man is a concert-length work from Bang on a Can composer Michael Gordon. The text is drawn from real life—Gordon’s experiences living in a changing neighborhood in Lower Manhattan, meeting his future wife (the composer Julia Wolfe), raising a family, and especially encounters with two homeless men who lived across the street. The piece reaches a surprising epiphany—after the bombing of the neighboring World Trade Center, and a few years later when one of the homeless men dies and Gordon watches the outpouring of sympathy from the community—that evokes Lincoln’s funeral train going through the streets of Manhattan, including Desbrosses. The interplay of personalities is beautifully rendered in music, springing from Michael’s conversations with the homeless men—serious, funny, mysterious, poetic, and mundane.
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