Coming up in Philly music: A Month of Moderns, with modern concerns

Refugees. Urban life. Homelessness. The director of the Crossing, Donald Nally, likes to schedule new music that addresses big issues. He’ll cover a broad spectrum in the eighth annual Month of Moderns — a three-concert series crowded with world premieres.

The Crossing is a small chorus specializing in new music. Nally staffed it with some of the top voices in the Philadelphia region and created an organization with a national reputation. His selections can be challenging and somewhat rarified, but he has a talent for picking works that stick in your mind. This year, the Month of Moderns starts in an unusual venue, the Icebox Project Space at Crane Arts in Northern Liberties. The world premiere on the program will be ‘mid the steep sky’s commotion, a multimedia “meditation on wind, the words it carries, and the stories within our city, Philadelphia, that those words tell.” The second concert, In Search of Ourselves, in Chestnut Hill, presents world premieres on displacement, migration, and refugees, with texts ranging from Homer’s Odyssey to contemporary poetry. The third performance, also in Chestnut Hill, premieres Anonymous Man, a concert-length work that depicts the communal life on the composer’s New York street and gives a musical voice to two homeless men who live there.

The Crossing will present its Month of Moderns on June 11 at 4pm at the Icebox at Crane Arts (1400 N. American Street), Philadelphia. The second and third concerts will take place on June 24 and July 1 at 8pm at the Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill (8855 Germantown Ave). Tickets are $35 ($20 for students and $25 for seniors), and they’re available online and at the door.