“We want to make works about places we love — places which are changing, have changed, that remind us of the effects we have on those places.

Montaña is such a piece: the third leg on the winding path toward a 24-hour “choral work with film” from two of the world’s most innovative creative artists.

Blending contemporary arrangements of western anthems and new music, Michael’s Montaña explores the region as a place of both extreme optimism and extreme desperation. Montaña focuses on the move West, the challenges faced in settling, the conflict and confiscation, the role of guns and of propaganda romanticizing the frontier. More specifically, it looks at the history of environmental degradation of Butte’s Berkeley Pit (one of the US’s largest EPA Super- Fund sites), the tracking and research of grizzly bears in Yellowstone, and historical footage of early agricultural practices in the 1920s and 1930s. Bill’s film draws on archival footage from all these topics as an integral component of the experience.”

-from www.crossingchoir.org