Donald Nally collaborates with creative artists, leading orchestras, and art museums to make new works for choir that address social and environmental issues. He has commissioned more than 180 new choral works and, with The Crossing, has produced 29 recordings. He has collaborated with orchestras and institutions that include the Los Angeles and New York philharmonics; Philadelphia Museum of Art; Park Avenue Armory; Metropolitan Museum of Art; Swedish Radio Choir; Latvian State Choir; Haarlem Choral Biennale; The Menil Collection in Houston; Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts; Lincoln Center; Mostly Mozart Festival; Cleveland Museum of Art, National Sawdust; Barnes Foundation; the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s MusicNow series; Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum; the National Gallery in Washington, DC; International Contemporary Ensemble; American Composers Orchestra; Klockriketeatern at the Finnish National Opera; the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey; Big Ears Festival in Knoxville; and the Warren Miller Performing Arts Center in Big Sky, Montana. He has been guest artist and teacher at Yale University, Duke University, Boston Conservatory of Music, the University of Cincinnati College–Conservatory of Music, Indiana University, the University of Illinois, Colgate University, Notre Dame University, Western Michigan University, Dartmouth College, and the University of Chicago.
In addition to his work with The Crossing, Donald has been visiting resident artist at the Park Avenue Armory and chorus master for the New York Philharmonic for world premieres of works by Julia Wolfe and David Lang. His 72-chapter series Rising w/ The Crossing, a response to the COVID-19 pandemic, gained national attention and was featured in the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and NPR’s Performance Today; it has been archived by the Library of Congress as a cultural artifact and an “important part of this collection and the historical record.”
