Grammy Award-winning choir The Crossing opens its 2022-23 season with “Walking the Farm: A Progressive Concert,” hosted by Art at Kings Oaks, at Kings Oaks Farm, 756 Worthington Mill Road, Newtown, at 4 p.m. both Saturday, Sept. 17, and Sunday, Sept. 18.
The interactive experience invites audience members to join The Crossing as the choir presents the world premiere of a new work by George Lewis, along with previous commissions “Breathturn” by Kirsten Broberg, “It is time” by David Shapiro and related works: “In beauty may I walk” by Jonathan Dove, and a thoughtful setting of a Czeslaw Milosz poem, Encounter “We were riding through frozen fields” by Latvian composer Pēteris Vasks.
Each work is performed at its own post, a musical resting place, along the short trek as the concert weaves throughout Kings Oaks Farm.
Inspired by the land and our relationship to it, the program explores human observation of nature and farmland, and serves as the opening bookend to the season, which closes in June with “Farming,” a new concert-length work of Ted Hearne considering themes of history and culture; land use, possession, and repossession; food, its source, and the unnamed people who grow it and move it, using the oft misunderstood phrase “farm to table.”
“Walking the Farm” is based on the “progressive dinner” model. Audience members will stroll the farm to hear brief sung performances at five sites—the barn, the creek, the old chapel, the field, the garden—while sampling local beer, wine, and small bites at each.
Tickets are $20-$35 at thecrossing.ticketleap.com/walking-the-farm.
There will be no walk-up tickets available at the concert. All tickets must be purchased in advance. Casual clothes are recommended. Contact shannon@crossingchoir.org for special circumstances requiring onsite shuttling.
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