The professional choir The Crossing, conducted by Donald Nally, will continue its season with the world premiere performances of Christopher Cerrone’s “Of being numerous” on Nov. 21 at The Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia, and Nov. 23 at the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist, Milwaukee. 

The new work draws its name from a poem of George Oppen, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author and American dissident who suspended writing for nearly two decades while participating in the resistance against the threat of fascism and attacks on free speech in post-WWII America. The work also draws on the words of Walt Whitman and William Faulkner.

In a statement Nally said, “The Crossing has long waited to debut a piece from Christopher Cerrone, and this collaboration with the adventurous musicians of Present Music in Milwaukee brings that opportunity – a new work, with dramatically relevant content, focusing on the poetry of Pulitzer Laureate and twice-exiled critic of the American government George Oppen, writing in another time of political tumult and fractured society.”

Cerrone added, “I have long loved Oppen’s work—his insistence that we need each other, that the singular self is insufficient. Beyond the obvious analogy of a choir – numerous voices that speak as one – I was drawn to a text about the messy embrace of other people at a time when rampant isolation and individualism tears at society’s fabric.”

The concert will pair Cerrone’s new work with Caroline Shaw’s “Ochre.”

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