Border CrosSing

Border CrosSing integrates diverse audiences and musicians through the performance of choral music.
Border CrosSing integra a públicos y músicos diversos a través de la interpretación de la música coral.

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We have an ambitious and exciting year ahead:

• Our December El Mesías performances were a wonderful way to kick off our Puentes season concerts!
• In the spring, we're partnering with our friends at the Minnesota Chorale and guest conductor Dr. Anthony Trecek-King for another “ Bridges: Expanding the Canon” concert. Our teaching artists will visit local schools, sharing our core repertoire, featuring works published on our sheet music series through Graphite Publishing.
• In April, Heritage Choir, our community chorus, begins their second season as an ensemble focused on bilingual music making, community, and storytelling.
• May offers an exciting finale to the year with three concerts: firstly, with our Heritage Choir Community Singing Event; secondly, two concerts with the Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra; and lastly with a concert featuring the music of our second album, Aquí te amo.

WHO WE ARE

Since its inception in 2017, Border CrosSing has been making its mark on the Minnesota classical music scene with rich, multicultural, vocal music-making. Our concerts feature daring, beautiful compositions old and new, lifting up rarely heard vocal music from Latin America. Our 2019 performance of Osvaldo Golijov’s La Pasión según San Marcos with the Minnesota Orchestra was named one of the year’s best concerts by the Star Tribune. In 2020, we received the ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming, by Chorus America. Our first studio album, Un milagro de fe / A Miracle of Faith, celebrates BIPOC composers from across the Americas. Our second album, Aquí te amo / Here I Love You, features two choral works from Mexico’s colonial period, two zambas by Carlos Guastavino, and two songs from the cardenche tradition of Sapioriz, Mexico, and two première recordings: Modesta Bor's "Aquí te amo" and Carol Barnett's "A Tree Telling of Orpheus."

OUR PROGRAMS

Puentes Ensemble and Concert Series
Border CrosSing's Puentes Ensemble is our professional vocal ensemble. This group has been featured in collaborations with Minnesota’s most important cultural organizations, including Schubert Club, the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, and the Minnesota Orchestra. Puentes is a multi-lingual series of choral concerts that connects audiences to Latin American history, culture, and repertoire that is rarely or never performed in the United States. Our concerts offer program notes in English and Spanish, and often combine traditional classical styles with non-classical Latin American genres.

Heritage Choir and Community Singing Events
Heritage Choir is our inclusive community chorus that focuses on teaching choral singing skills while exploring the cultural heritage of its members. Heritage Choir reimagines the rehearsal process, centering personal stories, celebrating cultural heritage, and exploring how music weaves through our lives. The journey to the final performance of each session of Heritage Choir is truly shaped by its community of singers. Our Community Singing Events welcome any member of the local community to share in music performances that features Heritage Choir, group singing, coffee, tamales, and pan dulce.

Education Outreach
Border CrosSing partners with local public schools, bringing our unique programming of Latin American music directly to schools. We offer curriculum, programming, and support specifically designed to address the needs of each school as developed by our expert educators in collaboration with each school’s music teacher.

Sheet Music Publications
Border CrosSing’s series through Graphite Publications features works and arrangements by living composers and new performing editions of historical Latin American vocal music.