The Tower and the Garden

Album review

This 2021 album marks the 23rd release by the small choir The Crossing, and increasingly, there are signs that the group's renown is penetrating beyond its native U.S. Consider the album's opening track, a setting of a Walt Whitman poem by composer Toivo Tulev, commissioned with support from Estonia's Ministry of Culture. Listeners uncertain about the contemporary content of The Crossing's recordings might gravitate toward the other two pieces on the album, which are more tonal, but Tulev's work offers a fascinating perspective on Whitman's writing, and it displays the talents of The Crossing at their most attractive. Always a virtuoso ensemble, the group has evolved into one of the most skilled choirs in North America, and it would be hard to find a better example than the frequent half steps in this piece with its drone-like choral chords punctuated by deliberate enunciations of the text. The pieces by Gregory Spears and Joel Puckett fit with The Crossing's general focus on environmental and spiritual themes but take it in unique new directions. The Spears work takes up texts that suggest "ways in which Catholic thoughts and imagery might challenge the technological status quo," while Puckett's piece uses words spoken by members of a tribal group from Botswana. All of the music is absorbing, and the choir is well supported by Navona's engineers in a resonant acoustic from Pennsylvania's Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill. For those unfamiliar with The Crossing, this release makes a fine, distinctive place to start with this choir and the unique corner of the choral music universe it has explored.
© TiVo