Received texts of “Congrats” this morning, which puzzled me, as I didn’t know what I was being congratulated for.
But then the news started slipping out that The Crossing received two nominations for Best Choral Performance for the 2020 Grammy Awards: Benjamin C. S. Boyle and Robert Convery’s Voyages, and The Arc in the Sky, my 65-minute unaccompanied setting of the poetry of Robert Lax. I’m happy for Benjamin and Robert, who are terrific composers, and also for Craig Hella Johnson and my friends in Conspirare, whose The Hope of Loving CD is also nominated. The Crossing and Donald Nally, well, I am thrilled for, as they leap from success to well-deserved success.
They sound like a billion bucks on The Arc in the Sky, by the way. A big thanks to Adrian Peacock and Paul Vazquez for helping to make that happen!
You can read all about it here, buy it here, and see the complete score at MusicSpoke here. Here it is at Navona Records, and here it is on Spotify.
When The Arc in the Sky was thrown into the Grammy hat a couple of months ago, I thought the chances were slim of its advancing, just because of how large the pool is at that stage. And since The Crossing won Grammys the last two years in a row, those chances, to me, felt even slimmer. But now The Arc is one of the finalists, it’s up against all worthies, including great friends of mine, and so here we go. See you January 26th!