Coming up in Philly music: A Month of Moderns means new songs for spring

David Lang’s “Battle Hymns” is one of the most memorable new pieces premiered in Philadelphia in the last decade. Lang’s music and his inventive treatment of his Civil War texts created a complex, profound response to war when the Mendelssohn Club premiered it in 2009. He won a Pulitzer Prize for the next piece he wrote, but I would have given it to him for “Battle Hymns.”

‘a house’

On June 9, Donald Nally’s chorus for new music, The Crossing, will present three pieces by Lang, with texts that range from a passionate statement by the American socialist Eugene Debs to a “meditative work” that mixes several translations of the book of Solomon. The three pieces will be part of a house, a crowded opening concert that kicks off The Crossing’s annual three-concert Month of Moderns.

The Month of Moderns is a springtime new-music festival that Nally inaugurated eight years ago. The other items on the first program look just as intriguing as the three Langs. “The Fruit of Silence” is a musical setting of a statement by Mother Teresa, composed by Latvian composer Pēteris Vasks. “Lincoln” is a setting of the dedicatory inscription in the Lincoln Bay of the National Cathedral by a 22-year-old composer, Alex Berko, who has been receiving major commissions while he’s still a student.

The world premiere on the program is titled “Who What Where When Why (and a Few Other Questions)”. Its composer, Ellis Ludwig-Leone, is a young up-and-comer who has achieved some renown with a rock band, San Fermin, while producing 20 pieces for chamber ensembles, orchestras, and choruses.

Month of Moderns continues

The other concerts in the festival are less varied, but they’re still good examples of Nally’s willingness to take risks and challenge his audience. The second concert will present two musical settings of “Voyages,” a poem cycle by the American poet Hart Crane. One will be a setting by Robert Convery that Donald Nally and West Chester University commissioned in 1994. The other is the world premiere of a new setting by Philadelphia composer Benjamin C.S. Boyle.

The third program will premiere a single, concert-length work by BSR contributor Kyle Smith, commissioned by The Crossing and Donald Nally. It’s titled The Arc in the Sky, and Nally says it “journeys through jazz and prayer, finding the joy and the quiet in our lives.”

The Crossing will present a house, the first of three Month of Moderns concerts, on Saturday, June 9, at 8pm at the Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill (8855 Germantown Avenue, Philadelphia). Additional concerts will follow at the same location and time on June 16 and 23. Tickets ($35; $20 for students and $25 for seniors) are available online and at the door.