The Crossing to premiere Joshua Stamper piece ‘mid the steep sky’s commotion

On Sunday, June 11th, The Crossing will open their Month of Moderns series at Crane Arts with the world premiere of a new piece composed by Philadelphia-based musician Joshua Stamper. Performed by the local Grammy-nominated choral group, Stamper’s ‘mid the steep sky’s commotion explores “what the wind says” with a collage of wind-blown texts.

In his first collaboration with The Crossing, Stamper uses his experimental talents to create both a requiem for the city’s unwanted ephemera and an ode to the powerful element that controls its journey, giving the former an unexpected longevity:

‘mid the steep sky’s commotion features a found-text libretto culled from the streets of Philadelphia, each movement representative of a different journey through the city. Texts have been harvested from objects that have been moved, gathered, and discarded by the wind – weathered gas receipts, discarded church bulletins, candy wrappers, concert flyers, matchbooks – and are separated, combined, and recombined. Order and disorder are generated on both horizontal and vertical axes.

The premiere will also feature an installation by Caroline Santa, whose visual representation of the libretto will turn Crane Arts’ Icebox space into a dynamic display of wind in its many forms. Tickets and information can be found here; check out some previous work by The Crossing and Joshua Stamper below.