Saturday, March 17, 5pm
The Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia
Harold Meltzer's You Are Who I Love* has waited six years from our first discussions to reach our stage. A collaboration with poet Aracelis Girmay, the work captures the undocumented immigrant experience in the United States. In the time from conception to performance, Aracelis' words have become all the more poignant and timely.
You are who I love, crossing the desert and trying to cross the desert
You are who I love, working the shifts to buy books, rice, tomatoes,
bathing your children as you listen to the lecture, heating the kitchen with the oven, up early, up late
In Harold's substantial addition to the choral cannon, Sandbox Percussion will play a broad variety of instruments, including wood slats that seem to be waiting to become...a wall?...or, perhaps a pile of lumber that was a wall. The voices and instruments are constantly in dialogue; they fuse, clash, dance, parry, and meld into a rich, ever-evolving texture of love.
Love is the subject. It is the object. It is the verb.
It is what we've been singing about lately.
It is, in the end, why we sing.
Also on the program, music for voices and percussion by Sarah Rimkus and Ēriks Ešenvalds, including "Earth Teach Me Quiet," which was featured on our Grammy-nominated album Rising w/ The Crossing and named one of The New York Times' Top 25 Classical Tracks of 2020.
* world premiere
This concert is made possible through the extraordinary generosity of Carol Westfall and an anonymous donor.
Change of Program
Due to health issues, the premiere of Gavin Bryars new work for The Crossing has been rescheduled for June 2025.