The Crossing Performs World Premiere Of Michael Gordon's TRAVEL GUIDE TO NICARAGUA This November

Grammy Award-winning choir The Crossing gives the world premiere performance of Michael Gordon's Travel Guide to Nicaragua at Congregation Rodeph Shalom in Philadelphia, PA on Wednesday, November 16, 2022 at 7:00pm and the NYC premiere performance at Carnegie Hall's Zankel Hall on Thursday, November 17, 2022 at 7:30pm. Avante-garde cellist Maya Beiser joins The Crossing for the long-awaited premieres, which were postponed due to the pandemic.

Travel Guide to Nicaragua, commissioned by Carnegie Hall, presents the story of composer Michael Gordon's family and their journey as Jewish refugees traveling from Poland to Nicaragua. The autobiographical work stems from interviews about Poland recorded by Gordon's father and uncle. At the intersection of memory and emotion, many of these interviews contain variations and contradictions either from lost memory or his father's choice not to speak about his homeland "as most of that life, the people and places, were completely annihilated." Travel Guide to Nicaragua is the second of a series of autobiographical works (following Anonymous Man) written by Gordon for The Crossing.

The world premiere performance of Travel Guide to Nicaragua is co-produced in partnership with Congregation Rodeph Shalom further emphasizing the work's ties to Jewish history, culture, and community. Congregation Rodeph Shalom, established in 1795, is the oldest Ashkenazi congregation in the Western Hemisphere. As the only Reform congregation in Center City Philadelphia, Rodeph Shalom provides the Jewish community profound connections through transformative study, prayer, and urban engagement

"We are excited about partnering with The Crossing and sponsoring this world premiere performance," said Rodeph Shalom Executive Director Jeffrey Katz. "This work expresses our profound Jewish value of welcoming the stranger, reflecting the story of Michael Gordon's family and their journey as Jewish refugees traveling from Poland to Nicaragua."

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Performance Details
TRAVEL GUIDE TO NICARAGUA
The Crossing
Donald Nally, conductor
Maya Beiser, cello

Wednesday, November 16, 2022 at 7:00pm
Congregation Rodeph Shalom | 615 N Broad St. | Philadelphia, PA
Tickets: $20 to $35
Ticket Link: https://www.crossingchoir.org/events/2022-23/travel-guide-phl

Thursday, November 17, 2022 at 7:30pm
Carnegie Hall | 881 7th Ave | New York, NY 10019
Tickets: $55 to $65
Ticket Link: https://www.carnegiehall.org/Calendar/2022/11/17/The-Crossing-Maya-Beiser-Cello-0730PM

Program:
Michael Gordon - Travel Guide to Nicaragua

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About The Crossing
The Crossing is a Grammy Award-winning professional chamber choir conducted by Donald Nally and dedicated to new music. It is committed to working with creative teams to make and record new, substantial works for choir that explore and expand ways of writing for choir, singing in choir, and listening to music for choir. Many of its nearly 150 commissioned premieres address social, environmental, and political issues.

The Crossing collaborates with some of the world's most accomplished ensembles and artists, including the New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, American Composers Orchestra, Network for New Music, Lyric Fest, Piffaro, Beth Morrison Projects, Allora & Calzadilla, Bang on a Can, Klockriketeatern, and the International Contemporary Ensemble. Similarly, The Crossing often collaborates with some of world's most prestigious venues and presenters, such as the Park Avenue Armory, Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts at the University of Pennsylvania, National Sawdust, David Geffen Hall at Lincoln Center, Disney Hall in Los Angeles, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Menil Collection in Houston, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, Haarlem Choral Biennale in The Netherlands, The Finnish National Opera in Helsinki, The Kennedy Center in Washington, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall, Symphony Space in New York, Winter Garden with WNYC, and Duke, Northwestern, Colgate, and Notre Dame Universities. The Crossing holds an annual residency at the Warren Miller Performing Arts Center in Big Sky, Montana.

With a commitment to recording its commissions, The Crossing has issued 27 releases, receiving two GRAMMY Awards for Best Choral Performance (2018, 2019), and seven Grammy nominations. The Crossing, with Donald Nally, was the American Composers Forum's 2017 Champion of New Music. They were the recipients of the 2015 Margaret Hillis Award for Choral Excellence, three ASCAP Awards for Adventurous Programming, and the Dale Warland Singers Commission Award from Chorus America.

Recently, The Crossing has expanded its choral presentation to film, working with Four/Ten Media, in-house sound designer Paul Vazquez of Digital Mission Audio Services, visual artists Brett Snodgrass and Steven Bradshaw, and composers David Lang, Michael Gordon, and Paul Fowler on live and animated versions of new and existing works. Lang's protect yourself from infection and in nature as well as Paul Fowler's Obligations, based on a poem of Layli Long Soldier, were specifically created to be within the restrictions imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic. The Crossing's pandemic response daily series, Rising w/ The Crossing, a series of 72 live performances with notes by Nally, has been archived by the Library of Congress as "an important part of the collection and the historical record."

The Crossing is represented by Alliance Artist Management. All of its concerts are broadcast on WRTI, Philadelphia's Classical and Jazz public radio station. Learn more at www.crossingchoir.org.

About Maya Beiser
Describing avant-garde cellist, producer, and multifaceted artist Maya Beiser, The New York Times writes, "The adventurous Ms. Beiser has been called the 'cello goddess,' which is not hyperbole: She summons from her instrument an emotional power so stirring that even the most stoic audience members risk turning into sobbing sacks of flesh." Passionately forging her artistic path through uncharted territories, Maya Beiser has been captivating audiences worldwide, bringing a bold and unorthodox presence to contemporary classical music, experimenting with various musical styles, and defying conventional norms with her boundary-crossing performances. Hailed as "the reigning queen of avant-garde cello" by The Washington Post, she has been called a "cello rock star," by Rolling Stone and praised as "a force of nature," by The Boston Globe.

Raised in the Galilee Mountains in Israel, by her Argentinean father and French mother, Maya spent her early life surrounded by the music and rituals of Jews, Muslims, and Christians, while studying classical cello repertoire. At the age of 12, she was discovered by the late violinist Isaac Stern who became her mentor throughout her early career. Reinventing solo cello performance in the mainstream arena, Maya is a featured performer on the world's most prestigious stages including Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, Brooklyn Academy of Music, The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, London's Southbank Centre, Royal Albert Hall and the Barbican, the Sydney Opera House, the Beijing Festival, Barcelona's L'Auditori, Paris' Cité de la Musique, and Stockholm's Concert Hall. Among the wide range of artists with whom she has collaborated are Louis Andriessen, Philip Glass, Tan Dun, Steve Reich, Brian Eno, Mark Anthony-Turnage, Shirin Neshat, Erin Cressida-Wilson, Bill Morrison, Robert Woodruff, Missy Mazolli, David Lang, Michael Gordon, Julia Wolfe, Evan Ziporyn, Pontus Lidberg, Wendy Whelan, Lucinda Childs, and Joe Hisaishi.

Maya's critically acclaimed multimedia productions World To Come, Almost Human, Provenance, Elsewhere: A Cello Opera, and All Vows have consistently been chosen for top critics' "Best Of The Year" lists. Recent seasons highlights include featured solo performances at the Barbican's Sound Unbound and Kings Place's Cello Unwrapped festivals in London, Cello Biennale in Amsterdam, Festival MANN in Naples, Italy and Strings for Autumn Festival in Prague; two new concerto premieres, Mohammed Fairouz's cello concerto with the Detroit Symphony and Mark-Anthony Turnage's Maya with the Swedish Chamber Orchestra; Bowie Symphonic: Blackstar, a collaboration with Evan Ziporyn that reimagines David Bowie's complete final album as a cello concerto, with performances in Boston, Barcelona, New York's Central Park SummerStage, and a 2018 U.S. tour; Spinning, a new collaboration with composer Julia Wolfe and visual artist Laurie Olinder, commissioned and premiered by Peak Performances at Montclair State University; her debut solo performance at the BBC Proms; and premiere performances of a cello concerto by the celebrated Japanese composer Joe Hisaishi at Carnegie Hall and in Tokyo, Japan. Maya is currently in the midst of an international 20 cities tour of her production THE DAY, a music and dance star-studded collaboration with Wendy Whelan choreographed by Lucinda Childs with music by David Lang, which premiered at Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival in August 2019.

Highlights of Maya's tours include performances at the Ravinia Festival in Chicago, Celebrity Series in Boston, Ojai Music Festival, International Festival of Arts and Ideas in New Haven, and major venues and festivals in Paris, Amsterdam, Torino, Milano, Tokyo, Taipei, Athens, Mexico City, Havana, Bogota and Adelaide. She has appeared with many of the world's top orchestras performing new works for the cello including the Detroit Symphony, Montreal Symphony, BBC Concert Orchestra, Boston Pops, Sydney Symphony, Seattle Symphony, Nashville Symphony, China Philharmonic, Shanghai Philharmonic, Barcelona Symphony, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, and the Swedish Chamber Orchestra, among many others.

Maya's vast discography includes twelve solo albums. Her recent albums Bowie Cello Symphonic: Blackstar (2020), delugEON (2019), Tranceclassical (2016), Uncovered (2014) and Provenance (2012), topped the classical music charts. She is the featured soloist on many film soundtracks, including an extensive collaboration with composer James Newton Howard for M. Night Shyamalan's The Happening and After Earth, Denzel Washington's The Great Debaters, Edward Zwick's Blood Diamond, and Rupert Sanders' Snow White and the Huntsman. Her performance of Lang's world to come IV has been featured on the soundtrack for Paolo Sorrentino's Oscar winning film, La Grande Bellezza.

Maya Beiser is a 2015 United States Artists (USA) Distinguished Fellow in Music; a 2017 Mellon Distinguished Visiting Artist at MIT Center for Art, Science & Technology; and was recently a Presenting Artist at the inaugural CultureSummit, held in 2017 in Abu Dhabi. Invited to present at the prestigious TED main stage in Long Beach, CA, Maya's 2011 TED Talk has been watched by over one million people and translated to 32 languages. She has been featured on NPR's Tiny Desk Concerts and All Things Considered, PBS News Hour, and the BBC World News. Maya is a graduate of Yale University and a founding member of the Bang on a Can All-Stars.

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