Nobody can accuse the Month of Moderns festival of foisting a single school of modern composition on its listeners.
The first of the three concerts by the Crossing choir Sunday at Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill touched all sorts of aesthetic bases: Radical minimalism rubbed shoulders with an openhearted manner influenced by Samuel Barber. Thanks to Crossing conductor Donald Nally, the program's sequencing was masterly and performances made you love everything. Well, almost.
Statement to the Court, a world premiere by David Lang, was the big news. This Pulitzer Prize-winning member of the downtown New York experimental Bang on a Can composer collective is becoming a consistent Philadelphia presence thanks to the Crossing, the Mendelssohn Club and, this fall, the Philadelphia Live Arts Festival. Why not? Philadelphia seems ready for it. Though his language is minimalist based, one never knows what conventional notions of composition he'll embrace or discard.