Jessica Beebe
Kelly Ann Bixby
Karen Blanchard
Steven Bradshaw
Maren Brehm
Jeffrey Cutts
Colin Dill
Micah Dingler
Ryan Fleming
Joanna Gates
Dimitri German
Steven Hyder
Mike Jones
Heather Kayan
Heidi Kurtz
Frank Mitchell
Rebecca Myers
Rebecca Oehlers
James Reese
Rebecca Siler
Dan Schwartz
Dan Spratlan
Elisa Sutherland
Shari Wilson

Donald Nally, conductor
John Grecia, accompanist
Steven Gearhart, assistant conductor

Dear World

by Lansing D. McLoskey
setting a poem by Poul Borum

We discovered Lansing's music in 2008 and immediately reached out to program something in June 2009 for the second Month of Moderns. That something was Burning Chariots, a work in 12 languages, with a line from Jeremiah that really resonated: "Do no violence to the foreigner, the fatherless, nor the widow; neither shed innocent blood..." Soon after, we asked Lansing to write a new work for The Levine Project (2010). What we received was really compelling and thoughtful: The Memory of Rain, with a part for Crossing organist Scott Dettra. It includes this wonderful Levine invention, referring to the indifference of clouds, that we all still love today: "They should be beaten every morning / They should be boiled and bitten like spoons."

Shortly after The Memory of Rain, I set out to make a commission for a choir I was conducting in Cincinnati, determined to have a piece on words of Wole Soyinka - a work that looked at zealotry and how we treat each other. Lansing wrote that 10-minute work in 2011 and it immediately felt to me like the beginning of a big work - a very big work. It eventually became, with the longtime curation of The Crossing, the 70-minute oratorio Zealot Canticles that won the 2019 Grammy for Best Choral Performance. Full of strong poetry, prose, and excerpts of Soyinka's speeches, the final movement observes, "What is on fire today is not only within the mind, but the very nation space in which we all draw breath."

This leads us to Lansing's Jeff Quartet, with yet another memorable literary phrase: "There is a forest which isn't a forest/ just a collection of trees/They call them 'The Trees of the Lonely.'" Right in the middle of our now 10-year friendship with Lansing, we lost Jeff. Zealot Canticles was still an idea. It's interesting to think of what Jeff knew when he left us - the plans we had that landed as expected, those that developed in ways we couldn't have guessed, and those that happened because he left us, like Jeff Quartets.

Dear world!
...but no one helps here, dear world.
Each must stand firm in this useless decay.

there is a forest which isn’t a forest
just a collection of trees,
they call them “The Trees of the Lonely.”

dear world!
there was so much I should have told you.

“Kære Verden” (©1970, Poul Borum).
Published in på denne side, Gyldendal: Copenhagen, Denmark, 1970.
English translation by Lansing D. McLoskey, with assistance from Peter Borum.
Used with permission of Gyldendal Group Agency.
English translation of “Dear World” © 2011, Lansing D. McLoskey.

First Pink

by Paul Fowler
setting a poem by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

Our connection to Paul Fowler goes back to his work Breath, a virtuosic setting of a Philip Levine poem that was written for The Levine Project in 2010 and featured on our first 'solo' CD, "It is Time".  It demonstrates an acute ear for the sound of The Crossing, still new in those early days. Breath inspired a long and ongoing relationship that includes two works for women's choir on our 2011 CD "I want to live", this Jeff Quartet, and a reprise of Breath for our 10th Anniversary Season.  

Paul's is a richly varied musical language; the Colorado landscape of his home and his keen interest in Buddhism inform his works and the philosophy behind them.  Serenity balances with desire. Technique weaves together fragile threads.  The moment is everything.  Thus, his Jeff Quartet, First Pink, begins and returns to the three little words that draw us into the world of this memorial:  "in the loss." 

In the loss 
is a branch 
with a brittle 
stem
where an old 
fruit hangs 
rust-colored
and dried 
beside
a tight cluster 
of  rose-tipped buds 
where something 
fragile
and persistent 
is just
beginning
to open.

 “First Pink” used with the permission of Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer.

What It Might Say - Ted Hearne

by Ted Hearne
setting an excerpt from “Communication between infant and mother, and mother and infant, compared and contrasted” (1968) 
by D.W. Winnicott (1896-1971), adapted by the composer

Ted Hearne was coming into focus at The Crossing in 2012 when we presented his work in a pre-election concert; the success of Privilege inspired us to commission a major work addressing political topics dear to Jeff’s heart and intellect.  The result, Sound from the Bench, was premiered at The Month of Moderns 2014. Since then we've gotten a lot of mileage out of it -- we recorded it in August 2016 and that CD was released in March 2017, and we toured it to the Philly Fringe Festival, the Isabella Gardner Museum in Boston, and National Sawdust in Brooklyn. 

When the idea of Jeff Quartets came to us, we were in the middle of preparing for Sound from the Bench. It was a really painful time for The Crossing family.  Ted's response? To set a text about how an infant processes 'finding' and 'losing' its mother.  Grappling with loss.  Rejoicing in union.  Surviving.  Exactly where we were.  

So in the end we can come down to the fact that the baby communicates creatively and in time becomes able to use what is found. For most people the ultimate compliment is to be found and used, and I suppose therefore that these words could represent the communication of the baby with the mother.
I find you;
You survive what I do to you as I come to
recognize you as not-me;
I use you;
I forget you;
But you remember me;
I keep forgetting you;
I lose you;
I am sad.

The Beautiful Land of Nod

by Robert Convery
setting a poem by Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1850-1919)
[bracketed text omitted by the composer]

From Donald:  Bob Convery and I have been friends since our days in Spoleto, Italy in the late 80s.  I will always remember the amazing conversation we had upstairs in Spoleto's Teatro Nuovo discussing a commission that was supposed to be the third poem of Hart Crane's Voyages. Sitting at the little, ancient table he used for librarian work at the Spoleto Festival, Bob confessed he'd fallen in love with Crane's entire six-poem cycle and he shyly asked if perhaps it would be OK to set the whole thing...  He wrote an extraordinary 1/2 hour work.

Jeff sang in Spoleto with both The Westminster Choir and The Crossing and he was in the world premiere of Bob’s Christmas Daybreak with The Bridge Ensemble in Philadelphia in 1997. That beautiful work became the title track of The Crossing’s Christmas CD in 2013 – a recording that was in memory Jeff's friend Ann Stookey.  We couldn't imagine then that we'd be asking Bob to write a work in memory of Jeff, and, while we'd rather have Jeff and not these memorial pieces, we're certainly fortunate to have this intimate, bittersweet gift from Bob as a part of Jeff Quartets.

Come, cuddle your head on my shoulder, dear,
  Your head like the golden rod,
And we will go sailing away from here
  To the beautiful Land of Nod;
Away from life’s hurry, and flurry, and worry,
  Away from earth’s shadows and gloom,
To a world of fair weather, we’ll float off together
  Where roses are always in bloom.

Come, close your eyes, and fold your hands,
  Your hands like the leaves of a rose,
And we will go sailing to those fair lands
  That never an atlas shows:
[On the north and the west they are bounded by rest,
  On the south and the east by dreams;
‘Tis the country ideal, where nothing is real,
  But everything only seems.

Just drop down the curtains of your dear eyes,
  Those eyes like a bright blue bell,]
And we will sail out, under star-lit skies,
  To the land where the fairies dwell.
Down the river of sleep, our boat will sweep,
  ‘Till it reaches that mystical Isle

Which no man has seen, but where all have been,
  And there we will pause awhile.
I will croon you a song, as we float along,
  To that shore that is blessed of God.
Then ho! for that fair land; we’re off for that rare land,
  That beautiful land of Nod.

Translation

by Ēriks Ešenvalds
setting a poem by Paulann Petersen

Ēriks Ešenvalds has been a longtime friend of The Crossing, beginning in 2010 with the US premiere of Sun Dogs. Since that time, his music has seeped into the core essence of The Crossing, with Stars, The Legend of the Walled-in Woman, Northern Lights, O salutaris, and the U.S. premiere of Long Road. We're also grateful to Ēriks for introducing us to fellow Latvian composer Santa Ratniece.

Jeff was instrumental in bringing Ēriks here to play piano in the world premiere of his Seneca’s Zodiac, written for our Seneca Sounds project in The Month of Moderns Festival 2011. When Jeff passed, Ēriks' message of condolence was among our first received.

The text for Ēriks’ Quartet is by Oregon poet Laureate Paulann Petersen; it focuses on the moon, noticing that it seems to be waiting for us to describe it in art – like a poem, waiting to be found. In Peterson's words and Ēriks' music we are reminded of the ephemerality of our lives set against the quiet eternity of the universe.

Amusingly, Eriks didn't write a quartet! He wrote a solo quartet above a five-voice choir, the members of which play tuned water glasses! So, it takes at least nine voices to pull off his 'quartet.' But, we're grateful for all the voices, because there is a lot of thought and a lot of love in this work – and a lot of ear toward The Crossing in its composition.

Empty of words, not empty
of light, the moon’s face
awaits the touch of a pen.

Empty of ink, but not
of silver, that pale
slate that is the moon

waits for a sweep
of letters inscribed
in strokes deep as dark

in which it floats.
Emptied of nothing,
filled with story, the moon becomes

a thin wafer melting
in the mouth, words
having found their tongue.

Used with permission.

A Jeff Quartet for 4 Voices

a 21st-century Elizabethan madrigal, based on a Lutheran Chorale
by Bo Holten
setting a poem by Thomas Campion (1567-1620)

Back in 2008, when preparing our first Month of Moderns, we decided to try a "season-featured composer" as a kind of experiment. Donald had discovered Bo's work through his residency at the BBC Singers and felt it a composing voice curiously absent from the scene in the U.S. We presented four of his works and he came to visit us that summer--our first visiting artist from Europe!--to hear his marvelous 24-voice motet In nomine and the kooky, virtuosic Rain and Rush and Rosebush.

Among the most endearing aspects of Bo Holten's successful Jeff Quartet (beloved by both audience and singers alike), is its manner of delivery. In a time when we receive all our new works typeset in Finale or similar software, Bo wrote his Quartet by hand and then sent us photos of it laid out on his dining room table! The red-striped table cloth screams Scandinavia. Take a look by clicking here.

Aptly titled, a A Jeff Quartet for 4 Voices is a bittersweet madrigal that, for us, captures a very personal history, yet, with its roots melding Lutheran Chorales and Elizabethan counterpoint, is a universal outpouring of joy and sorrow.

When to her lute Corinna sings,
Her voice revives the leaden strings,
And doth in highest notes appear
As any challenged echo clear;
But when she doth of mourning speak,
Ev’n with her sighs the strings do break.

And as her lute doth live or die,
Let by her passion, so must I:
For when of pleasure she doth sing,
My thoughts enjoy a sudden spring,
But if she doth of sorrow speak,
Ev’n from my heart the strings do break.

Sumptuous Planet

by David Shapiro
setting an excerpt from Unweaving the rainbow: science, delusion
and the appetite for wonder by Richard Dawkins

David Shapiro has been a kind of resident composer for The Crossing all along His It is Time is the title track of our first CD in 2010, for which he also composed The Years from You to Me (on a Celan translation by his wife Ulrike). David composed Et incarnatus est for Christmas 2007 and his A Century of Aprils was featured in our Month of Moderns 2015.  That work was written for The Bridge Ensemble in 1997; so, that's twenty years of collaborations that also includes a huge orchestra/chorus work, On the meeting of Garcia Lorca and Hart Crane, written for the Choral Arts Society of Philadelphia in 2001.  

David knew Jeff well and knew that he was a great fan of Richard Dawkins and his progressive mixture of science, wonder, spirituality, and atheism.  For his Jeff Quartet, David set a classic quote of the famed evolutionary biologist in a brief work that moves effortlessly from mystery to exuberance to wonder.  

After sleeping through a hundred million centuries we have finally opened our eyes on a sumptuous planet, sparkling with color, bountiful with life. Within decades we must close our eyes again.

Used by kind permission of the author.

Yes, I Am Your Angel

By Gabriel Jackson
setting a poem by Kārlis Vērdiņš, translated by Ieva Lešinska

At first it may seem an odd choice for a memorial piece - a poem from a Latvian poet that answers a poem by Beat poet Alan Ginsberg, which itself addresses Walt Whitman and Garcia Lorca.  But the poem is immensely literary, like Jeff, and, Ieva Lešinska's translation brilliantly captures poet Kārlis Vērdinš reverence of those artists who came before him.  In fact, the supermarket boy immortalized by Ginberg in his famed poem "A Supermarket in California," in his observations of the commercialized world in which he lives, ramps up Ginsberg's dismay to a cultured - and at times comic - cynicism.  Jeff would have approved and related. Of course, Gabriel Jackson's unique compositional voice tightens the screws on this already taut and compact poem, and the result is a work that is clearly written for our singers - full of joy and pain, hope and pessimism.

Gabriel composed the first work The Crossing sang in our first performance in November 2005; Jeff worked to commission two major works from Gabriel – According to Seneca for Seneca Sounds 2011 and Rigwreck for The Gulf (between you and me) 2013; Gabriel attended both and has become a close friend of The Crossing. 

ANGEL

("Are you my angel?" Allen Ginsberg.)
A Supermarket in California

Yes, I am your angel, driven out of heaven tonight to wrap a
weary shrivelled apple for you, an apple passed so many times
from one pair of greedy hands to another. Sale tonight:
fresh fruit at a discount, dead flesh by installment.

Don’t tell anyone, I am your angel, David shaped by
Michelangelo; if my hands were kissed tonight, their
porcelain knuckles would tinkle: “Your sky is the colour
of eyes,” you’d wheeze, ever the poet.

I wonder how much you’d get selling my parts at the flea
market? Wincing from a bottle of gin mixed with black-currant jam, drunk
in a dimly-lit room full of dead bodies, and shared with a stranger
picked up at a bar; he’d babble boozily about tanks, and upon
leaving he’d snatch your wallet.

An angel behind every counter tonight, aren’t their smiles broader
than the contract requires; the shift is over, in a flutter of
wings they take off to their half-empty rooms: a naked
bulb, a stove in the corner, cool cradling hands, a kiss on
that sweet, curly-haired head.

The gent behind you is busy counting his money. He’ll buy all
the plums and bananas, he’ll buy the supermarket perhaps,
and I’ll be included; he’ll set me on a shelf behind glass,
dust me off with a horsehair brush, polish heaven with a
strip of plush.

Stop shouting, stop bragging. Quick, take the cucumbers out of
your pockets, ask to be taken home; don’t fret, write
a poem.

Used with permission.

You are Most Welcome

by Kile Smith
setting excerpts from emails written to the composer by Jeff Dinsmore

Jeff and Kile worked together on producing the latter’s Where Flames a Word for The Celan Project, our first large commissioning project for The Month of Moderns 2009, our first festival. The Waking Sun followed for Seneca Sounds in The Month of Moderns 2012, written for The Crossing and Tempesta del Mare.

You are most welcome.
I hope all is well in the new year for you.

I know you aren’t finished yet,
but would you mind taking
a few minutes to chat with him?

I can give you much higher resolution.
I shot all the ones from the recording
so you can use whatever.
You can use whatever you want.
I love the shot of you and your daughter,
and yes, you look relieved.

On the way to you.

Should be soon.

Hope all is well.

Best,
Jeff

Ahania Weeping

by Louis Andriessen (b.1939)
setting an excerpt from The Book of Ahania (Chapter 5, verses 1, 2, 6, 7, 14) by William Blake (1757-1827)
[bracketed text omitted by the composer]

It was Louis’ De Materie that we were preparing to sing with the Los Angeles Philharmonic when Jeff passed suddenly at Disney Hall. Louis indicates that Ahania Weeping should be sung by eight voices, a nod to the forces required for De Materie, bringing to memory that one of those eight was missing from that performance, as shown in a now-iconic photo in The Los Angeles Times. 

Ahania Weeping is sung by the seven singers with Jeff in LA at the time of his passing, plus James, who became a regular member of The Crossing in Jeff’s absence. 

1. The lamenting voice of Ahania,
Weeping upon the Void!
And round the Tree of Fuzon,
[Distant in solitary night,]
Her voice was heard, [but no form
Had she; but] her tears from clouds
Eternal fell round the Tree.

2. And the voice cried: ‘Ah, Urizen! Love!
[Flower of morning! I weep on the verge
Of Nonentity—how wide the Abyss
Between Ahania and thee!]

6. [‘Where is my golden palace?
Where my ivory bed?
Where the joy of my morning hour?]
Where the Sons of Eternity singing,

7. ‘To awake bright Urizen, my King,
[To arise to the mountain sport,
To the bliss of eternal valleys;]

14. [‘But now alone! over rocks, mountains,
Cast out from thy lovely bosom!
Cruel Jealousy, selfish Fear,
Self-destroying!] how can delight
Renew in these chains of darkness,
[Where bones of beasts are strown
On the bleak and snowy mountains,]
Where bones from the birth are burièd
Before they see the light?’

For Orpheus

by William Brooks
setting the poem “Jeff Dinsmore Acrostic Elegy” written for Jeff Quartets 
by Pierre Joris

Jeff knew Pierre well from our close collaboration on The Gulf (between you and me) – The Month of Moderns 2013 – for which Pierre wrote all the words.  We have worked with Bill a number of times: on a large work he arranged for our recording, I want to live, and then again last summer on in memoriam reducere studemus – an earlier collaboration with Pierre that we programmed to mark Jeff’s passing.  When we asked Bill to write a Jeff Quartet, he immediately turned to Pierre to renew their collaboration.  

Like Orpheus, for you, Jeff, we finger the strings of life
to play in sorrow and dEep choral dismay a plaint of
life and death our co-Founders two notes enshrine us
a vision we sound today For the absence of one tone as
one man has left but we minD, with Orpheus, the carefully
sheltered memory of his voIce and intellect of loving
care, his hands-on life a true captaiNship we call on and hail
to celebrate your crossing he was an OrpheuS on the road
calm, funny, with the sweetest huMan tenor voice, beloved
by & loving his choral community, Orpheus, you left us in
the city of the Angels, c’est la vie, cRossing over, c’est la mort —
yes, you led us here, we will go on as wE sing you now.

Used with kind permission of the author.

Thousand Waves

by Santa Ratniece
setting a poem from The Divan (1140:1-4) 
by Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī (1207-1273), 
translated by Fatemeh Keshavarz

In 2013 we presented U.S. premieres of three of Santa’s major vocal works during The Month of Moderns; Jeff arranged to bring Santa from Latvia for two of three concerts.  At the time of Jeff’s passing we knew we would have our own new work from Santa for Seven Responses, premiered in June 2016, two prior to Jeff Quartets in Philadelphia. 

I arrived once again, like the spring breeze;
I rose like the sun visible to all.
I am the Sun in mid-summer, contrary to the old season;
I have brought liveliness and joy to gardens.
A thousand ring doves are searching for me in their songs.
A thousand nightingales and parrots are flying in my direction.
The news of my arrival reached the fish in the sea;
The ferment of the sea created a thousand waves.

make peace

by David Lang (b.1957)
after the mourner’s Kaddish

Few composers have had a longer or more intimate relationship with us then David, and Jeff was integral in producing David’s Statement to the Court, which we commissioned and premiered as part of The Levine Project for The Month of Moderns 2010.  David’s works for women are featured prominently on I want to live, which is named for one of his works; his Pulitzer-winning The Little Match Girl Passion has become a signature work for our ensemble. 

If you can make peace
make peace
in the heavens
in us
in all the world

Empire of Crystal

by Benjamin C.S. Boyle
setting an excerpt from Invisible Cities (Chapter 4) 
by Italo Calvino (1923-1985), translated by William Weaver
[bracketed text omitted by the composer]

Since their days singing together at St. Mark’s Church, Benjamin, Jeff, and Rebecca remained close, with Benjamin writing a number of works for us over the years. Benjamin wrote the first commissioned work sung by The Crossing at our first concert in November 2005; he also composed the motet sung at Jeff’s memorial service.  For Month of Moderns 2010 we sang his cantata To One in Paradise. One of his Three Carols for Wintertide was written for The Crossing @ Christmas in 2007. 

“And yet I know,” [he would say], “that my empire is made of the stuff of crystals, [its molecules arranged in a perfect pattern]. Amid the surge of the elements, a splendid hard diamond takes shape, an immense, faceted, transparent mountain. Why do your [travel] impressions stop at disappointing appearances, [never catching this implacable process]? Why do you linger over inessential melancholies? Why do you hide from the emperor the grandeur of his destiny?”

Gentle Soul, Find Peace

by Lewis Spratlan
setting a single phrase

Jeff’s sang the solo movement, “Paradox,” on words of Richard Feynman, in Lew’s major work Vespers Cantata: Hesperus is Phosphorus for The Month of Moderns 2012.  That movement brought together many elements of his life: the musings of an admired physicist, humor, irony, and the music of Dan’s father. At the time of Jeff’s passing, Lew had agreed to write another big work for The Crossing’s Seven Responses.

Gentle soul, find peace.