The Crossing @ ACDA

The Crossing @ ACDA 2023
Donald Nally, conductor

Friday and Saturday, February 24 and 25 at 8pm
Aronoff Center, Cincinnati, Ohio

PROGRAM

The Absence/Remember
in One Act

Prologue: and thus we are kept in line

I’m So Mad, I Could Spit Nails, from TITRATION (2022) Shara Nova

Sc. 1: ordered as commodities

SHIFT (2020/2021) Ayanna Woods

1. Refrain
2. Shift
3. Bound

Sc. 2: we have laid tar / and we have laid concrete

Passenger Pigeon, from Spectral Spirits (2019) Edie Hill

Prelude: These Birds
Eyewitness: Henry David Thoreau and the Passenger Pigeon
The Naming: Passenger Pigeon
Passenger Pigeon

Imagine A Favorite Place, from TITRATION Nova

Sc. 3: we have arranged ditches easy to mow

Carolina Parakeet, from Spectral Spirits Hill

Eyewitness: Gert Goebel and the Paroquets
The Naming: Carolina Parakeet
Carolina Parakeet

Hematite, from Ochre (2022) Caroline Shaw

Sc. 4: we have mowed the nests of marsh wrens

Eskimo Curlew, from Spectral Spirits Hill

Eyewitness: Lucien M. Turner and the Migration of the Curlews
The Naming: Eskimo Curlew
Eskimo Curlew

Urgency, from Carols after a Plague (2021) Nova

Sc. 5: we have metered spring

Ivory-Billed Woodpecker, from Spectral Spirits Hill

Eyewitness: Mr. Wilson and the Ivory-bill
The Naming: Ivory-Billed Woodpecker
Ivory-Billed Woodpecker

Sc. 6: around the absence of bluestem

The Absence, Remember (2022) Jennifer Higdon

–world premiere–

commissioned by The American Choral Directors Association Endowment
in memory of Raymond W. Brock.

Goethite, from Ochre Shaw

Epilogue: a turkey buzzard preens and waits

Resolve, from Carols after a Plague Nova

NOTES + TEXTS

“I’m So Mad, I Could Spit Nails” from TITRATION
words and music by Shara Nova

TITRATION was commissioned by The Crossing - Donald Nally, conductor, the Warren Miller Performing Arts Center in Big Sky, Montana, & Conspirare - Craig Hella Johnson, conductor; with support from Anne and Dennis Wentz and the Joel Brauer Fund for New Music.

a note from the composer:
TITRATION is a choral song cycle composed during the spring and early summer of 2022. As a person of southern heritage, growing up in a politically conservative family, but having traveled a “moon trip's distance” philosophically from home, the political debates of the country always land at the dinner table, deeply dividing my family, and also dividing me. We disagree on a great many topics, and yet I love my family dearly. I carry the contradictions and tensions of my family within me, no matter how far away I may fly.

Home is complicated. Is home a feeling of safety? How is safety created? How do I make home in myself? How can we disagree so strongly, and still come to the table together? As a child I often understood the best way to deal with big feelings was to go silently into my bedroom and remain there until I could come out with a “better attitude.” The story of my learning how to identify feelings and stay connected to my body is ongoing. The details of what has happened to me personally to make emotion and body awareness difficult were not necessary to tell. Instead I wanted to share some explorations in asking the question, “How do I keep on feeling in this mean, mean world?”

The song cycle is not a therapeutic model, but points to healing modalities, teachers, and ancient practices about which I hope you, the listener, will become curious to research. I would like to acknowledge and offer gratitude to the Somatic Abolitionist body of work of Resmaa Menakem specifically from whom I am learning to value humming, to orient to a space, to rock myself, to notice the silence, to notice the rage, and the importance of gathering with others in practice to heal racialized trauma. To the work of 4,000 years of Qi-Gong practitioners and to Master Chunyi Lin and Master Daniel Li. To polyvagal theory author Deb Dana To my compassionate Somatic Experiencing therapist. To artist Helga Davis who held my hand and told me about the co-regulation of heart rates. To everyone who has come together to practice with me, and to Laughter Yoga.

I’m so mad I could spit nails
I might shoot fire from my ears

M y r a g e
M y r a g e
My rage is as old as an age

Titrate Try Titration
Voo Voo
My rage

My eyes are daggers for days
I make my point in different ways
My throat’s aflame a fire
My belly burnin’ up with ire
Comin’ easy to my lips
I’m so mad I could spit

I’m so mad I could spit nails
Somatic I could spit nails
I’m so mad

The feeling got me sick
I’m so mad I could spit
Enough! Enough! Enough! You are a pain in the neck
Enough! Enough! Enough! You might be my death
My rage
My head is burnin’ up
My head is burnin’
My rage
From where do you shake?

Spectral Spirits
music by Edie Hill (b. 1962)

SHIFT
words and music by Ayanna Woods

1. Refrain

commissioned by The Crossing

“For years now I have heard the word "Wait!" It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This "Wait" has almost always meant “Never.”"
– Martin Luther King, Jr., 1963

“They earnestly believe that it is too soon to do away with plantation justice.”
– Bella Bahhs, 2021

wait
wait and see
see, wait
wait for—
(four, five, six, seven)
wait more
more weight
wait for the video
(thirteen)
wait for the video to be released
(sixteen... eighteen)
wait to be released
soon
(twenty, twenty-one)
wait for release
soon
soon
(you too, soon)
too soon, wait—
wait and see
see, wait
just wait
wait a while and see
wait while you see
wait. see. wait. see.
just a while
a just while
just

2. Shift

commissioned by Thomas Kasdorf for The Crossing Votes: 2020 – a pre-election film project by The Crossing, Four/Ten Media, and Digital Mission Audio Services.

Why do we build monuments in stone?
Stone is brittle. When it cracks, it cuts to your churning core, America.
Tectonic plates collide; you shift in your seat.

I want a monument we imagine and reimagine and reimagine—
A monument we grasp and heave and pull in a long arc
bursting through the cracks in the story you tell, America.

3. Bound

commissioned by The Crossing

“You have to act as if it were possible to radically transform the world. And you have to do it all the time.”
– Angela Davis

“Power. Transformation. Miracles. I want it. I need it. I gots to have it. Right Now!”
– a Black Liberation chant, as taught by Dream Defenders

for my grandmother
for my grandmother’s hands
for the work of her hands
for her loving labor

for my grandfather
for my grandfather’s feet
for the pounding of his feet
for his loving labor

for the transformation
their loving labor
brought we inhabit
for a transformation
we are bound
right now

with our hands
with the work of our hands
with our feet
with the pounding of our feet
Right Now!

Spectral Spirits
music by Edie Hill

Spectral Spirits was commissioned by The Crossing and Donald Nally with generous support provided by John Hawthorn and Danielle Macbeth.

a note from the composer:
When Donald asked “are there any texts you’ve been dying to set?” [for The Crossing’s 2019-2020 Season: Word/Extinction/Twilight] I immediately thought of Passings by Holly J. Hughes. Each of the 15 poems in her book lovingly tell the story of birds who are highly endangered, extinct, or believed to be gone.

Composing Spectral Spirits was as much a study of humans as it was of birds. I found myself asking how human beings managed to obliterate these species. In some cases, populations were brought back from the brink of extinction only to be brought down again. False sense of security, perhaps. Human beings take for granted, forget. Why, if we see something alive, vibrant, with striking color, do we want to possess it to the point of oblivion? Why is it permissible to destroy nature in the name of “progress” or financial gain? In the end: we all lose.

I grieve every day for the state of our planet and her creatures. Composing Spectral Spirits was a gift that gave me a chance to funnel this grief. It allowed me to celebrate the creatures we’ve lost. And, it was an impetus to look out for the ones that still appear in the treetops.

PRELUDE: THESE BIRDS

Take note. These birds are still singing to us. We must listen.

–Holly J. Hughes

PASSENGER PIGEON

Eyewitness: Henry David Thoreau and the Passenger Pigeon (tenor solo with choir)

"Blue...dry slate...blue, like weather stained wood...a more subdued and earthy blue than sky...a fit color for this aerial traveller as its path is between sky and earth."

–Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862), American author and naturalist, adapted by the composer from Hope is the Thing with Feathers by Christopher Cokinos (b. 1963)

The Naming (alto solo)

Echtopistes migratorius. Wandering wanderer.

Passenger Pigeon

from the painting by James J. Audubon, 1824. On Sept. 1, 1914, Martha, the last passenger pigeon, died in the Cincinnati Zoo.

See how she bends to him, her beak held within his
while she waits for his food to rise up to her hunger.

He rests on the arcing branch, his neck a perfect answer to hers,
wings held aloft and slightly splayed while long tail feathers stream

away, Prussian blue going to dusk, breast russet, branch below
studded with viridian lichen to match his coat, colors chosen

by Audubon as he painted them in courtship in situ.
See how her colors foreshadow the fall—dun, mustard, black—

how her tail balances his wings painted in parallel planes,
how the drooping oak leaf holds them in place, stasis

in which they are aware of no one but each other.
Audubon captured then in gouache, graphite, and pastels,

not knowing they would soon be gone; in his time
they were more numerous than all other species combined.

They say the pigeons flew over the banks of the Ohio River
for three days in succession, sounding like a hard gale at sea.

Years later, guns spattered shot into skies stormy with pigeons.
Thousands plummeted, filling railroad cars bound for fine restaurants.

Now, of those hundreds of millions that once darkened
the skies, we are left with Martha, who never lived in the wild,

stuffed in the Smithsonian, Prussian-blue feathers stiff,
glass eyes staring, waiting, still, for her mate.

–Holly J. Hughes

“Imagine A Favorite Place” from TITRATION
words and music by Shara Nova

Imagine a favorite place
An open green field
Or a blowing wind through the forest

Imagine a favorite resting place
A candle flame on your nightstand
The coffee smell on the morning air
The afternoon light on your hugging chair

Imagine an ocean side or a cloud ride…

Spectral Spirits
music by Edie Hill

CAROLINA PARAKEET

Eyewitness: Gert Goebel and the Paroquets (bass solo)

"In winter...flocks of paroquets were a real ornament to the trees stripped of their foliage...a flock of several hundred...settled on a big sycamore...the bright green color of the birds...the many yellow heads looked like many candles.

[In Germany] a young birch...was set in a pail of water. In the warm room it produced delicate leaves...and on Christmas Eve, was decorated with gilded and silvered nuts, apples and candies, not unlike these bird-covered tree tops, these enormous Christmas trees of the forest."

–Gert Goebel (1816-1896), German settler in eastern Missouri, from a translation of his 1877 autobiography, adapted by the composer from Hope is the Thing with Feathers by Christopher Cokinos

The Naming (alto solo)

Puzzi la neé. Head of yellow. Conuropsis carolinensis.

Carolina Parakeet

Incas, the last Carolina parakeet, died in his cage at the Cincinnati Zoo on Feb. 21, 1918, only six months after the death of Lady Jane, his companion of thirty-two years.

From Mexico to New York they flew, tail feathers streaming,
startling in the monochrome of winter’s eastern shore.

When their forests were cut, they swooped to the farmlands
in waves of color—yellow, green, orange—lit in fruit trees,

found the soft squish of peaches, cherries, figs. Descending
three hundred at a time, in crayon-box flocks, they were shot

by farmers defending their crops—who could fault them?
Shot for their tail feathers, all the rage on ladies’ hats,

shot because they would not desert each other, each staying
by its wounded mate until hunters picked them off,

one by each last, bright, exotic, faithful one.

–Holly J. Hughes

“Hematite” from Ochre
music by Caroline Shaw

commissioned by the Ann Stookey Fund for New Music for The Crossing and Donald Nally, Cantori New York, and Volti (San Francisco)

From the composer:
I like to write music for voices without text, because it allows the voice to be a colorful instrument independent of language. And I like to combine different kinds of text, fragments from various eras and sources, to build a nuanced frame for thinking about a subject. Ochre lives more in vowels and timbres than in text, but I’ve woven in fragments of Tennyson’s “In Memoriam” (which frames human existence with metaphors of geologic time, iron ore, rock), as well as a partial setting of Goethe’s “Wanderers Nachtlied" in Longfellow’s translation. (Goethe was a geologist, and goethite — a common mineral in ochres — is named for him.) In general, there is both a mournful quality to this material, but also a sense of joy and wonder about the planet, and really about music and the voice.

The fifth movement contains the formula for the iron oxide compound hematite — Fe2O3 in its unhydrated form, resulting in red ochre — and Fe2O3 · H2O for the yellow ochre of hydrated hematite.

Mille regretz, que vous abandonner
Et d’eslonger…
Qu’on me verra [brief mes jours definer.]

My brief days…so soon

Translation:
A thousand regrets at deserting you
and leaving behind…
That it seems [soon my days will dwindle away.]
–fragment from a 15th-c. chansons att. to Josquin des Prez

Spectral Spirits
music by Edie Hill

ESKIMO CURLEW

Eyewitness: Lucien M. Turner and the Migration of the Curlews (soprano solo with choir)

"The calls of a distant flock...sound like the wind whistling through a shipʹs rigging or the jingling of countless sleigh bells."
–an observer

"A most graceful undulation...like a cloud of smoke wafted by the lightest zephyr.
The whirl and rise...(Their) aerial evolutions (are) one of the most wonderful in the flight of birds."

–Lucien M. Turner (1848-1909), American ethnologist and naturalist, adapted by the composer from "Where Have All the Curlews Gone?" by Paul A. Johnsgard (b. 1931)

The Naming (alto solo)

Numenius borealis. Swiftwing. Sweetgrass. Little Sicklebill.

Eskimo Curlew

I grew up reading The Last of the Curlews before bed,
your crescent-moon beak beckoning me north.

Even then you were almost gone, though millions of you
once filled the skies, migrating from the northern tundra

to South America, feeding on grasshoppers along the way.
Within twenty years, your vast flocks were brought down

by market hunters, fire suppression, tilling of the prairies,
eradication of grasshoppers. Before hunting was banned,

two million curlews were killed each year.
Here’s the part that still makes me weep:

You were wiped out because you stayed
by your fallen companion; from you

I learned what loyalty means. Today, birders
search for you along Galveston’s shore,

sometimes catch a glimpse, memory being so strong.
No one knows for sure you’re gone. You live on

in the pages of a book, a waning crescent moon.

–Holly J. Hughes

“Urgency” from Carols after a Plague
words and music by Shara Nova

Commissioned for The Crossing by Steven Hyder and Donald Nally.

a note from the composer:
These songs are not about changing someone's mind or proving anything to anyone. They are, I hope, a small contribution to a culture of healing. Of slowing down. Of normalizing conversations about racism. Of learning to notice the cultural habit of tone-policing Black women, and as a white person, inhibiting those reactions and learning to sit with the complexity of feelings that arise in stillness. And a call to come back to the commitment that we may have made to join the Black Lives Matter movement when George Floyd was murdered, but then things with other white people got hard and we may have withdrawn to solitude or status quo.

I want to acknowledge the work of Resmaa Menakem and his book “My Grandmother's Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies” and the impact his teaching has had on this music. I also want to give thanks to my mentor Kelly Germaine for her guidance, and my white musicians caucus with whom I am practicing in community, the work of somatic abolitionism. I am continuing to study, and learn to identify the ways in which white body supremacy presents in my own body and mind, and then continuing to do the slow work of training new somatic responses,

Take care of yourselves and each other as you sing, as you listen to each other.

In the beginning
there was the sound of cymbals crashing.
And in the end all things will drift away
just as a noise disappears into silence.
While here in the between time you are in a rush.
How is it that it came to be?
How is it that you are able to imagine
before and after time?
How is it to slow down time
and wander and wonder out under the sky.

Spectral Spirits
music by Edie Hill

IVORY-BILLED WOODPECKER

Eyewitness: Mr. Wilson and the Ivory-Bill (baritone solo)

"The first place I observed this bird...was twelve miles north of Wilmington...North Carolina. There I found the bird from which my drawing was taken. ...
...
While engaged in taking the drawing, he cut me severely in several places...on the whole, displayed such a noble and unconquerable spirit, that I was frequently tempted to restore him to his native woods. He lived with me nearly three days, but refused all sustenance, and I witnessed his death with regret."

–Alexander Wilson (1766-1813) Scottish-American poet and ornithologist, 1811, adapted by the composer from Hope is the Thing with Feathers by Christopher Cokinos

The Naming (alto solo)

Campephilus principalis. Principal lover of grubs. Splendid recluse of the swamp.

Ivory-Billed Woodpecker

I wish I’d been at the sighting that inspired its nickname,
the Lord God bird. I’d love to see this woodpecker,

perhaps extinct, perhaps not; no one knows for sure.
Standing twenty inches tall with white wing patches

and a flashy red crest, who wouldn’t say Lord God,
look at that? Once it made its home in the hardwood

forests of the south; birders say its ivory bill could pierce
bark eight inches deep. Imagine the racket. Even so,

they were vulnerable: a single pair needed six square miles
of wet forest with dead trees in which to search for grubs.

In 1948, when a Louisiana forest was cleared for a soy plantation,
the last population vanished. The Cuban subspecies survived

a few more decades, but by 1970, logging had reduced its population
to eight pairs. In the 1990s, explorers in the mountains near Moa

found fresh signs of feeding, caught a glimpse of a bird that may
have been the ivory bill, but that sighting was never confirmed.

Since then, more reports have surfaced, suggesting
the Lord God bird may not be gone. A few still hide,

spectral spirits, reminding us of the shimmering line
linking memory and desire, reminding us that perhaps

it’s not too late to save them, to save us all.

–Holly J. Hughes

the little match girl passion
words and music by David Lang (b.1957) adapted from the words of H.C. Andersen, H.P. Paull, Picander, and Saint Matthew

The Absence, Remember
music by Jennifer Higdon
words by Athena Kildegaard and Charlotte Mew

Commissioned by The American Choral Directors Association Endowment in memory of Raymond W. Brock. Premiered at the ACDA National Conference by The Crossing and Donald Nally on February 24, 2023, in Cincinnati, Ohio.

a note from the composer
The Absence, Remember
Could be a prediction
Could be an observation
Could be a warning
Could be solace
Could be the answer
Could be voices reaching out
Could be all of these...and more...

Around the Absence of Bluestem

“everything has to arrange itself around that absence”
–Peter Read, the father of Mary Reach,
a victim of the Virginia Tech Shooting

Around the absence of bluestem,
at the one-eyed top of a silo,
a turkey buzzard preens and waits

Around the absence of bluestem
we have arranged lines and angles
in four-square order,
we have metered spring
and laid the coils of tile
to pull what’s too much
off the land

Around the absence of bluestem
we have mowed the nests of marsh wrens,
and the monarch larva,
and the painted turtle,
we have mowed the painted turtle

And we have laid tar,
and we have laid concrete,
around the absence of bluestem
and around the absence of pasque flower and puccoon and vervain
we have arranged ditches easy to mow
and blacktop striped and gouged

And thus we are kept in line,
ordered as commodities,
pinched and blunted and dulled and spent.

–Athena Kildegaard, from Prairie Midden (Tinderbox Editions, 2022, used by permission)

MAY, 1915

Let us remember Spring will come again
To the scorched, blackened woods,
Where the wounded trees
Wait with their old wise patience for the heavenly
   rain,
Sure of the sky: sure of the sea to send it’s healing
   Breeze,
Sure of the sun. And even as to these
Surely the Spring, when God shall please,
Will come again like a divine surprise
To those who sit today with their great Dead, hands in
   Their hands, eyes in their eyes,
At one with Love, at one with Grief: blind to the
   Scattered things and changing skies.

–Charlotte Mew (1869-1928)

“Goethite” from Ochre
words and music by Caroline Shaw

hear hush still quiet sleep

now you all wait soon

“Resolve” from Carols after a Plague
words and music by Shara Nova

I wish you great joy in the perpetual discomfort,
in the shifting of the paradigm.
There will be no ease for a while.
What is your question?
Be not discouraged, do not fall into numbness.
Resolve to increase your discomfort,
and thus attain a calm body.
Be curious of one another.
Scribe the shared truths of history.
Reap the reward, truth.
Do not abandon high ideals.
Do not run to distraction.
Do not run from your discomfort.
Be curious.
Return to your commitments.
Increase your discomfort to find your joy,
and live humbly under the sun.

James ReeseFebruary 24, 2023

The Crossing @ ACDA