Caramoor Leadership

About the Music.

The Forest is The Crossing’s response to the pandemic of 2020. We could not sing safely indoors, so we rethought what we do, why, and how, moving outdoors to sing, listen, and connect.

We designed an amplification system we call Echoes Amplification Kits that allows singers to stand 30’ from each other and from the audience. Listeners ‘walk through’ the performance as the speakers of Echoes, positioned close to the path, create an intimate experience, reestablishing the broken relationships between singers and audience members while telling our story — the story of a planet in crisis, its people and its forests in peril. Yet, in that curiously human way, the story is one of hope and of a way forward.

The Forest focuses on the symbiotic relationship between individual trees and the forest — a metaphor for the relationship between each singer and our ensemble. The libretto is formed of our singers’ reflections on their isolation during COVID-Time, overlaid with texts from Scott Russell Sanders’ essay Mind in the Forest.The music was developed (perhaps it is more accurate to say, “found within the words of the singers") by Donald and Kevin.

The Crossing is grateful to Thomas Kasdorf, who supported the process and technology to bring The Forest to life. Tom passed on just four weeks after the premiere. The Forest exists as just one of a number of legacies left by this generous, inspiring artist.

Echoes Amplification Kits

This is The Crossing’s response to the time in which we live — a time when singing together in conventional formats (inside, gathered closely, depending on our ears to commune, audiences within a few feet) has been proven unsafe. So, we have rethought how we do what we do: sing, listen, and connect. One product of this reimagining is Echoes*, a conduit for intimate, expressive vocal art.

Developed by The Crossing’s sound designer, Paul Vazquez, each Echoes amplification kit features an individual six-foot pillar speaker and headset microphone that allow singers to sing together, outside, and safely socially distant. In-ear headphones allow for listening, and a loop pedal lets one voice transform to many; the 24 voices of The Crossing can, through looping, become a choir of over a hundred voices.

Yet, Echoes is not meant to replace what we normally do; it is an extension of our collective singing, rooted in the need to adapt to new ways of gathering. The isolation of singing during the pandemic is ever-present, while the joy of finding this way to do so is equally clear.

* Ex-Covid Haptotropic Optimistic Electrophonic Sound