Seven Responses
A substantial double album that never loses sight of the human voice at its heart, Seven Responses from Philadelphia’s superlative choir, The Crossing, began as a project to explore the topic of suffering. Seven extraordinary composers were asked to respond to one of the cantatas of Dieterich Buxtehude’s 1680 oratorio, Membra Jesu Nostri (The Limbs of Jesus). Performed by The Crossing and the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), the resulting pieces are diverse and uniquely personal yet together create a whole body of work that has an uncanny logic and leaves a powerful impression. One to remember.
Hailing from Denmark, Latvia, Germany, Iceland and the USA and including two Pulitzer Prize winners (Caroline Shaw and Lewis Spratlan), the composers have produced works that cover a broad swath of styles. Hans Thomalla calls on the wind instruments to play multiphonics, blurring our perception as the choir shimmers around their distorted pitches, while Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s piece moves from violent string effects to prayerful contemplation in a fully synthesized color palette.
David T. Little creates a sonic bath of low, reverberant tones and chants, broken by the hammering of brake drums and the power of an electric guitar and drums piercing the mystical atmosphere. And Danish composer Pelle Gudmundsen-Holmgreen — who passed away just two days after the premiere of his “Ad cor” — crafts three movements that come together, overlap, and form a whole in the final movement, in an astonishing amalgamation of form and content.
Lewis Spratlan teams with poet Paul Kane to create a modern cantata that recalls Ancient Greek tragedy in its treatment of the chorus and soloists. Here, ICE is lush and descriptive, providing the aural backdrop on which the story of the suffering, dying earth is played out in lyric, sometimes sorrowful, at other times exhilarating, colors. Hope, warning, and lament, all wrapped in his facile, powerful musical language.
The Crossing is a professional chamber choir conducted by Donald Nally and dedicated to new music. Consistently recognized in critical reviews, The Crossing has been hailed as “exquisite” (The New York Times, 8/16), “cutting-edge” (Q2 Music, 7/16), and “indisputably genuine” (The Philadelphia Inquirer, 7/16). Formed by a group of friends in 2005, the ensemble has since grown exponentially and “has made a name for itself in recent years as a champion of new music” (The New York Times, 2/14).
