RIGWRECK finds The Crossing immersed in the urgent, word-driven choral writing of celebrated British composer Gabriel Jackson. The five works are guided by texts that wrestle with what the Earth tries to tell us, gun violence, longing, and the fragile bonds between self and world. Conducted by Donald Nally, the ensemble gives voice to poetry by Gustav Sobin, Pierre Joris, Dean Rader, Walt Whitman and Kārlis Vēdeņš (in Ieva Lešinska’s translation).
From the ecological reckoning of the title work, written in response to the Deepwater Horizon disaster, to the intimacy of Yes, I am your angel and the spiritual expanse of Darest thou now O soul?, Jackson’s music requires the singers to come together in virtuosity and vulnerability. Each work was written for The Crossing and Donald Nally over the span of a decade and recorded in 2024 at St. Peter’s Church in Malvern, PA. RIGWRECK is contemporary choral music as witness and journalist, transcendent, and direct.
According to Seneca
music by Gabriel Jackson
words by Gustav Sobin (1935-2005)
Commissioned by The Crossing and Donald Nally with funds provided by The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage through the Philadelphia Music Project. Premiered at The Month of Moderns on June 5, 2011 at The Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill.
... every wind, according to
Seneca, has
its
origins in some deep‐
seated stellar configuration. once, every
word, its every
blown
vocable, came rippling out of an else‐
where that
was. edge, then, towards what? you, whoʹd
scraped pebbles, goaded
shadows, hover,
now, in the
coves of imploded
al‐
lusion. here, where even the air, this
morning, lies as if
im‐
pacted, yes, in so
many exhausted particles, would
feed yourself, wouldnʹt you, to
the
slightest interstice, oversight, pry free of
your own, in‐
exorable
replication. for just beyond would lie the
bars,
chords, the
sonorous reefs of
some suggested passage. whisper, then. Yes,
murmur the
wavering blue line of that
taut,
tenuous horizon: ʹwind,ʹ ʹwaves,ʹ whitecaps,ʹ
what, in
themselves, meant nothing, whereas nothing, you
knew, without them (burst,
pulverized) could
possibly
mean.
Yes, I am your angel
music by Gabriel Jackson
words by Kārlis Vērdiņš, translated by Ieva Lešinska
Commissioned by The Crossing and Donald Nally for Jeff Quartets, a legacy project honoring the life of co-founder Jeff Dinsmore. Premiered July 8, 2016 at The Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill. Jeff Quartets was made possible by the support of the Ann Stookey Fund for New Music.
ANGEL
("Are you my angel?" Allen Ginsberg.)
A Supermarket in California
Yes, I am your angel, driven out of heaven tonight to wrap a
weary shrivelled apple for you, an apple passed so many times
from one pair of greedy hands to another. Sale tonight:
fresh fruit at a discount, dead flesh by installment.
Don’t tell anyone, I am your angel, David shaped by
Michelangelo; if my hands were kissed tonight, their
porcelain knuckles would tinkle: “Your sky is the colour
of eyes,” you’d wheeze, ever the poet.
I wonder how much you’d get selling my parts at the flea
market? Wincing from a bottle of gin mixed with black-currant jam, drunk
in a dimly-lit room full of dead bodies, and shared with a stranger
picked up at a bar; he’d babble boozily about tanks, and upon
leaving he’d snatch your wallet.
An angel behind every counter tonight, aren’t their smiles broader
than the contract requires; the shift is over, in a flutter of
wings they take off to their half-empty rooms: a naked
bulb, a stove in the corner, cool cradling hands, a kiss on
that sweet, curly-haired head.
The gent behind you is busy counting his money. He’ll buy all
the plums and bananas, he’ll buy the supermarket perhaps,
and I’ll be included; he’ll set me on a shelf behind glass,
dust me off with a horsehair brush, polish heaven with a
strip of plush.
Stop shouting, stop bragging. Quick, take the cucumbers out of
your pockets, ask to be taken home; don’t fret, write
a poem.
Rigwreck
music by Gabriel Jackson
words by Pierre Joris (1946-2025)
Words and music commissioned by The Crossing and Donald Nally for The Gulf (between you and me), a project addressing the Deepwater Horizon disaster. Premiered at The Month of Moderns on June 30, 2013 at The Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill.
In memoriam Pierre Joris.
A THROW
what do we know, what can we know?
OF THE DICE
of science, of love?
only the facts, that is to say
only effects
NEVER
can this happen
NEVER even if, can this happen
in science, in love
EVEN WHEN CAST
Indra’s net of love,
EVEN WHEN CAST
money’s net of stone
what do we know, what can we know?
What has caused this gulf
between water & oil, you & me
IN ETERNAL CIRCUMSTANCES
(no circumstances are eternal,
AT THE HEART OF
of this rigwreck
What will we know?
We know only effects / have to choose
the causes
A SHIPWRECK at the heart that the
gulf widens
between water & oil, you & me
fish & water, me & you
that the
Abyss
between water & water, you & you
me & me, oil & fish
widened then whitened
there is slack growing
raging underwater in the heart
underheart in the water
on the brain
what we know is oil & water don’t mix
what we know is fish & oil don’t mix
what we know is you & I have to mix
what we know is you & I have to live
under an incline
clinamen of a warming clime
an angle not an angel tells us
me & you want to live
even if despair desperately soars
& gets an angry rise
form the phantom pain of its own planet’s sore
broken wing
a second-hand angel singing Ecce Homo,
Ecce Homo, though not so Sapiens,
conscious liar,
beforehand relapsed, liar, liar, not released from wrongly steering
the flight of this planetary love affair
no use repressing the outbursts
of this lethal love affair
cleaving the bounds
of this oily love affair
at the root of greed
set the rig afloat
a ship finally a ship
the impossible change
for deep inside weighs the admission of impending disaster
the shadow hidden in the depth
by this by this arrogance this arrogance
at the root of greed this arrogance
at the root of arrogance
this love this love for more
a more always spelled out in money
blows the rig up this morning
will blow the world up tomorrow
there is no alternate sail
ship earth in space / space ship earth
the only raft for dumb sapiens
who has to learn to love
this imperfect raft
there is no alternate sail
dumb sapiens has to learn love
has to learn to adjust
has to learn to look to the spread
the spreading of disaster
has to learn to jump
its yawning depth
as great as any abyss
between you & me
the hull of a rig
the hull of a ship
careening from side to side
turns over & is for a moment cathedral
burning church of the worship of money
brightly floating death flaunting love
rigwreck rigwreck
a catastrophe here now,
the circumstances local & global
not eternal only this now
cannot grasp the hawser
opens a gulf
between life & death
a millimeter uncrossable
a BP centipede monster
at the heart of this rigwreck
abolish abolish
abolished responsibility
Moloch, Moloch
Moloch —
rules, Moloch
rules
all rules broken when Moloch rules.
Self-Portrait in Charleston, Orlando
music by Gabriel Jackson
words by Dean Rader
Commissioned by The Crossing and Donald Nally in honor of, and with gratitude for, The Reverend Cindy Jarvis and her congregation at The Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill, and with the generous support of Mark and Rebecca Bernstein, Ann Carr, Emilie Carr, Dan Isenschmid & John Lovegren, Kathy Krantz & Bill Toffey, Ken Lovett & Jeff Perkins, Laura Madeleine, Jeff & Liz Podraza, Barbara Rubin, Deb Siler, Harry & Barbara Spaeth, Alice Lea Mast Tasman, David & Rebecca Thornburgh, Joan Torello, Beth Wrigley, Steven Hyder & Donald Nally.
The news this morning
said that Ramadi
had fallen to ISIS
and that the president
did not have a plan
to push them back
into the Anbar province
though I have a plan
to walk down to the
beach in silence perhaps
where I will stand
in water the temperature
of most corpses
and look out over
the shapeless ocean—
its waves shifting from
one color to the next,
this moment the shade
of an old bruise—
toward Japan,
which I imagine I see
across the map of
motion, that mystical
country which has
almost completely
ridden itself of guns,
like the one the boy
used to shoot nine
people assembled
to worship a man whose
skin history tells us
was the same color
as theirs, that mythical
man who may have walked
the streets of Ramadi in
those missing years
between his youth and
his destiny, and who
knows how many
of the slain
he may have raised
in those streets,
or pulled up out
of night into the
long daylight of the
not-yet-lived,
birthed back into
the skin of suffering,
or how many the man
might have dipped
into those mythical waters
that eventually emptied into
the Gulf of Oman and then
into the Arabian Sea
before their long walk
of waves across
time and history
to South Carolina and
into Charleston
but then retreating to
work their way down
the Eastern coast of
Florida and perhaps
even inland to
Orlando and then
back out again around
every country, every
boat, every body before
arriving on the beaches
of San Francisco on
the far end of the other
side of that mythical
continent, perhaps
even where I am
standing, the water’s
color like a bullet, and I
wonder if all life is
somehow loaded into
the chamber of a rifle,
the long tunnel of
darkness before us
our birthright and even
our destiny, all of it
as close to the hammer
as the width of these
lines, themselves an
inheritance of something
I am only now
beginning to understand,
like an insurrection
that no one saw,
not even those
in it, not even the man
with his hand on the trigger
or the people ready to rise.
Darest thou now O soul?
music by Gabriel Jackson
words by Walt Whitman (1819-1892)
A gift from the composer, at the request of Steven Hyder, in celebration of Donald Nally’s 60th birthday. Premiered at The Month of Moderns on June 11, 2022 at The Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill.
Darest thou now O soul,
Walk out with me toward the unknown region,
Where neither ground is for the feet nor any path to follow?
No map there, nor guide,
Nor voice sounding, nor touch of human hand,
Nor face with blooming flesh, nor lips, are in that land.
I know it not O soul,
Nor dost thou, all is blank before us,
All waits undream'd of in that region, that inaccessible land.
Till when the ties loosen,
All but the ties eternal, Time and Space,
Nor darkness, gravitation, sense, nor any bounds bounding us.
Then we burst forth, we float,
In Time and Space O soul, prepared for them,
Equal, equipt at last, (O joy! O fruit of all!) them to fulfill O soul.
THE CROSSING
Dario Amador-Lage • Nathaniel Barnett • Jessica Beebe • Kelly Ann Bixby • Karen Blanchard • Maren Montalbano • Aryssa Burrs • Colin Dill • Micah Dingler • Ryan Fleming • Joanna Gates • Steven Hyder • Michael Jones • Lauren Kelly • Anika Kildegaard • Rebecca Myers • James Reese • Daniel Schwartz • Rebecca Siler • Tiana Sorenson • Daniel Spratlan • Elisa Sutherland • Daniel Taylor • Jackson Williams
Donald Nally - conductor
Kevin Vondrak - assistant conductor & artistic associate
John Grecia - project keyboards
Lee Hagon - guest keyboards
Jackson Pierzina - summer associate
Recording Producers: Paul Vazquez, Donald Nally, and Kevin Vondrak
Recording Engineer: Paul Vazquez
Assistant Recording Engineer: Codi Yhap
Editing, Mixing, and Mastering: Paul Vazquez
Album Artwork by Rita Quattrocchi.
This album was recorded June 23-26, 2024 at St. Peters’s Church in the Great Valley, Malvern, Pennsylvania.
This album was made possible through the generous support of Carol Westfall.