The Crossing Votes: 2024

a Pre-Election Project

a commissioned premiere recording and film

addressing issues in the national discourse
leading to Election Day, November 5, 2024

When we made The Crossing Votes: 2020, there were many dire issues on our minds. Yes, an election, but an election reflecting a pandemic, our commonwealth handling of that pandemic, the protests and unrest of the Summer of 2020, the reexamination of the oft-reexamined plague of racism – not just “out there,” but next door and at home. And, we were facing the practical need to create work for our artists whose entire professional lives had been shuttered by the virus. The Crossing Votes: 2020 became a mirror for us – on immigration, refugees, and monuments – with works of Ayanna Woods, Nick Cline, Rob Maggio, and David Lang. We were fortunate; we got outside, we yelled, we whispered. We gave thanks for being and for being together, and in the process, we were able to “shout out” some of our frustrations and hopes.

All those issues remain unresolved and very much present in our lives today, on the eve of a new general election. But this time around, we have had a bit more space to assess, to take a breath, and to ruminate on the nature of these frustrations and hopes four years later. Out of the pressure cooker of the pandemic, we have a bit more breadth to ask, “If we have the privilege of words and music combined to make song, what do we want to say, in that song, at this moment, at this place, about ourselves, our commonwealth, our role in the world? What is it like to be here, now?”

When I read Richard Blanco’s “Cloud Anthem” a little less than a year ago, I knew that his words are our onramp to November 5. And I imagined animation by our long-time collaborator Brett Snodgrass – a visual perspective on a musical perspective on a scribe’s poetic perspective on us. Clouds, and us.

The poem makes me smile. It makes me long. It makes me want to act, with grace. It reminds me of Wisława Szymborska’s playful, insightful poem, “Psalm,” in which she observes the impunity of clouds and the subversive moles for brazenly ignoring our meticulously drawn borders. In Richard’s poem, we have the potential – the until – to emulate the freedom and malleability of clouds, their elasticity, their common origin, their delight in separating and rejoining, their impulse to soften their hard edges. There is invitation, yes, but there is also acknowledgement: we have choices.

We can decide to move boundlessly…
sharing a kingdom with no king, a city with no walls.

Cloud Anthem.
An anthem about clouds,
for those in the clouds,
and for those reaching.

This is our anthem,
a Cloud Anthem,
for this moment.

Be clouds.
Vote.

The Crossing Votes: 2024
Cloud Anthem

Cloud Anthem

excerpted by the composer from the poem of Richard Blanco
            words in brackets are not set; words in parentheses are modifications to the poem

Until we are clouds that tear like bread but
mend like bones. Until we weave each other
like silk sheets shrouding mountains…
Until we soften our hard
edges, free to become any shape imaginable:
a rose or an angel crafted by the breeze…
Until we scatter ourselves—
…then band together
like stringed pearls. Until we learn to listen to
each other, as thunderous as opera or as soft
as a showered lullaby.

Until we have the courage to vanish like sails
into the horizon, or be at peace, anchored still.
Until we move without any measure,
floating
in an abyss of [virtual] blue we belong to.

Until we care enough
for the earth [to] bless it as morning fog...
Until we remember
we’re born from rivers and dewdrops.

We can die valiant as rainbows,
and hold light in our lucid bodies...
We can decide to move boundlessly, without
creed [or] desire. Until we (we are clouds sharing)
a kingdom with no king,
a city with no walls, a country with no name,
a nation without any borders or claim. Until
we abide as one together in one single sky.

 – “Cloud Anthem”, from How to Love a Country: Poems by Richard Blanco, Copyright © 2019 by Richard Blanco. 
Reprinted with permission from Beacon Press, Boston, Massachusetts.

The Team for Cloud Anthem

sung by The Crossing
conceived and conducted by Donald Nally
Kevin Vondrak, associate conductor
John Grecia and Lee Hagon-Kerr, collaborative keyboards
Paul Vazquez of digitalmissiononline.com, audio engineer
Paul Vazquez, Donald Nally, and Kevin Vondrak, producers
Shannon McMahon, managing director
Naomi Bennett, artistic associate
Jackson Pierzina, assistant

Recorded June 26, 2024 at St. Peter’s Church in the Great Valley, Malvern, Pennsylvania.

with special thanks to Carol Westfall