The Crossing presents World Premiere of Michael Gordon's Major New Choral Memoir ANONYMOUS MAN

Anonymous Man is Michael Gordon's first concert-length solo choral work. It was commissioned by The Crossing and written for the choir's 24 voices. Gordon merges subtle rhythmic invention with incredible power in his music, embodying, in the words of The New Yorker's Alex Ross, "the fury of punk rock, the nervous brilliance of free jazz and the intransigence of classical modernism."

The concert takes place Saturday, July 1 at 8:00 p.m. at Philadelphia's Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill and concludes The Crossing's Month of Moderns, the choir's 8th annual festival of new music.

The text for Anonymous Man 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 Gordon's conversations with the homeless men-serious, funny, mysterious, poetic, and mundane.

In the words of Donald Nally: "This work began with a discussion about diaspora-the disengaged, relocated, lost. But in Michael's thoughtful hands, it has grown into a beautiful contemplation of what a community is and does; how it makes, holds, and loses its own history. It's very personal; it has an intimacy that invites us to contemplate connections-those that are purposeful and those that happen by coincidence of time and place."

Anonymous Man caps a thrilling few months for The Crossing that has included performing Gavin Bryars at the Big Ears Festival; several album releases including John Luther Adams' Canticles of the Holy Wind and TEd Hearne's Sound From the Bench; a 2017 GRAMMY nomination for Best Choral Performance; and awards including American Composers Forum 2017 Champion of New Music (to be received July 1 at this concert) and the 2017 Chorus American/ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming.

Over the past 30 years, Michael Gordon has produced a strikingly diverse body of work, ranging from large-scale pieces for high-energy ensembles and major orchestral commissions to works conceived specifically for the recording studio. Transcending categorization, this music represents the collision of mysterious introspection and brutal directness.

The Young People's Chorus (Great Trees of New York City), Dublin Guitar Quartet (Amplified), Ballett Zürich (CORPUS), The Crossing (Anonymous Man), and the Rotterdam Philharmonic (The Unchanging Sea) present premieres of Gordon's work in 2016-17. Other 2016-17 highlights include the the Trance on tour with Ictus Ensemble with Maud Le Pladec and dancers, Timber performed at the Big Ears Festival, Dystopia danced by Doug Varone and Dancers, and Rushes performed at National Sawdust.

During the 2015-2016 season, Michael Gordon saw the premiere of three new works for orchestra, including two concerti and a work for orchestra with Native American drummer/singers: Natural History, a work written for Crater Lake in Oregon and the 100th Annivesary of the United States' National Parks; Observations on Air, a concerto for bassoon for soloist Peter Whelan, commissioned by the British ensemble The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightment; and The Unchanging Sea, a piano concerto for Tomoko Mukaiyama with a new film by Bill Morrison.

Gordon's special interest in adding dimensionality to the traditional concert experience has led to numerous collaborations with artists in other media, most frequently with filmmaker Bill Morrison and Ridge Theater. In Decasia, a commission from Europaischer Musikmonat for the Basel Sinfonietta, the audience is encircled by the orchestra and large projections. A large-scale, single-movement, relentlessly monumental work about decay - the decay of melody, tuning, and classical music itself - Decasia has become a cult favorite since its premiere in 2001, frequently performed at music festivals, art museums and film festivals around the world. Gordon and Morrison's works together also include film symphonies centered on cities: Dystopia (about Los Angeles) in 2008 for David Robertson and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and Gotham (about New York City) in 2004 for the American Composers Orchestra. Gordon and Morrison were reunited in January 2015 for the premiere of a third installment of their city pieces, El Sol Caliente, commissioned by the New World Symphony about Miami Beach - Gordon's hometown.

Gordon has been commissioned by Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, the BBC Proms, the Seattle Symphony, the Rotterdam Philharmonic, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Brooklyn Academy Of Music, the Britt Festival and the Sydney 2000 Olympic Arts Festival, among others. His music has been featured prominently in the dance works of Emio Greco | PC, Wayne McGregor (for Stuttgart Ballet, Random Dance), Pina Bausch's Tanztheater Wuppertal, Heinz Spoerli (for Zürich Ballet), Ashley Page (for The Royal Ballet and The Scottish Ballet), and Club Guy & Roni. The recipient of multiple awards and grants, Gordon has been honored by the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His recordings include Timber Remixed, Dystopia, Rushes, Timber, Weather, Light is Calling, Decasia, (purgatorio) POPOPERA, Van Gogh, Trance, and Big Noise from Nicaragua.

Formed in 1983 as the Michael Gordon Philharmonic and renamed the Michael Gordon Band in 2000, Gordon's own ensemble has performed across Europe and the United States at venues as diverse as Alice Tully Hall and the punk mecca CBGB, on the Contemporary Music Network Tour, and at the Almeida Festival in London.

Gordon is co-founder and co-artistic director of New York's legendary music collective Bang on a Can. His music is published by Red Poppy Music (ASCAP) and is distributed worldwide by G. Schirmer, Inc.

The Crossing www.crossingchoir.com The Crossing is a professional chamber choir dedicated to new music and conducted by Donald Nally. Formed by a group of friends in 2005, the ensemble has since grown exponentially, receiving many national awards and exemplary critical reviews in such journals as The New York Times ("hypnotic and ethereally beautiful"), and The Los Angeles Times ("ardently angelic").

With a commitment to record its many commissions, The Crossing is releasing five CDs during the 2016-17 season; its collaboration with PRISM, Gavin Bryars' The Fifth Century, was named one of The Chicago Tribune's Top 10 Classical CDs of 2016 and its recording of Thomas Lloyd's Bonhoeffer was nominated for the 2017 Grammy as Best Choral Performance. Its recent recording of TEd Hearne's Sound From the Bench was called "groundbreaking" by The Philadelphia Inquirer. The Crossing's numerous collaborations include work with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), the American Composers Orchestra, and the Rolling Stones; it has sung at Walt Disney Concert Hall, The Kennedy Center, Symphony Space, Carnegie Hall, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Sawdust, Boston's Gardner Museum, the Cleveland Art Museum, Lincoln Center's Mostly Mozart Festival, and the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia; in March 2017 it performed at the 2017 Big Ears Festival, and in July the chorus heads to to its annual two-week summer residency in Big Sky, Montana.

A recent headline in The Philadelphia Inquirer declared, "The Crossing: Changing the World Once Concert at a Time." The ensemble has received numerous awards including the Margaret Hillis Award, Chorus America's top honor, as well as three ASCAP/Chorus America Awards; it has been named a 2017 Champion of New Music by the American Composers Forum.

The Crossing is represented by Alliance Artists Management.

Donald Nally

Conductor Donald Nally is responsible for imagining, programming, and conducting at The Crossing, where he has commissioned over sixty works. He is also the John W. Beattie Chair in Music and director of choral organizations at Northwestern University and has held distinguished tenures as chorus master for Lyric Opera of Chicago, Welsh National Opera, Opera Philadelphia, Spoleto USA, The Chicago Bach Project, and for many seasons at the Spoleto Festival in Italy. Donald is the recipient of the Louis Botto Award and the Michael Korn Founders Award from Chorus America and is the only conductor to have two ensembles receive the Margaret Hillis Award for Excellence in Choral Music - in 2002 with The Choral Arts Society of Philadelphia, and in 2015 with The Crossing. Donald has guest conducted the Latvian State Choir in Riga, the Grant Park Symphony Chorus in Chicago, the Philharmonic Chorus of London, and the Santa Fe Desert Chorale; he has made numerous appearances on the Chicago Symphony Orchestra's MusicNow series.

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