Philly Fringe 2018: The Crossing presents 'Of Arms and the Man'

Its title was taken from Virgil’s Aeneid and the concert was also a tale of a journey, starting with a prelude written as a looped recording for a morgue in France. The audience entered while three cellists — Alexander Hersh, Arlen Hlusko, and Thomas Mesa — played a dirgelike drone of upward thirds and fourths. Sopranos and altos crooned a soft lament.

Cellos provided the interludes between songs as well as some exciting accompaniment, especially Thomas Mesa’s imitating the sopranos with cello harmonics in “Johannisbaum” by Suzanne Giraud, a humorous setting of a French poem by Pascal Quignard. The work offered a delightful performance of teasing repetitions sung with perfect timing and elocution.

A world premiere

The first set ended in a fiery world premiere by Ted Hearne, who had the choristers bark, bay, whine, and whinny in his work “Animals.” The animal noises were accompanied by pitched singing.

Several singers whipped out tuning forks to find their pitches among the din of the choral zoo and sang, “These aren’t people, they’re animals.” The rhythm of those words took on a disturbing taunt. The noise dwindled to a heartrending cry of “Papa,” which the composer explained is meant to depict a young girl in a government detention center.

The dim lighting gave the performance the feeling of a funeral, but its mostly somber songs were performed with such verve that the concert was, in the end, uplifting. Even David Lang’s “last spring” held the mood, though it was modeled after a poem by Aasmund Olavsson Vinje, about an old man experiencing what may be his final spring.

Lang, whose work closed out the program, dedicated this piece to the memory of Fabric Workshop and Museum founder Marion “Kippy” Stroud, who died in 2015. The beautiful soprano voice of Rebecca Myers sailed like a whisper over the choir. The hush at the end of the piece seemed to last forever.