Photo by Peter Serling
Anonymous Man is a concert-length work from Bang on a Can composer Michael Gordon. The text is drawn from real life—Gordon's experiences living in a changing neighborhood in Lower Manhattan, meeting his future wife (the composer Julia Wolfe), raising a family, and especially encounters with two homeless men who lived across the street. The piece reaches a surprising epiphany—after the bombing of the neighboring World Trade Center, and a few years later when one of the homeless men dies and Gordon watches the outpouring of sympathy from the community—that evokes Lincoln's funeral train going through the streets of Manhattan, including Desbrosses. The interplay of personalities is beautifully rendered in music, springing from Michael’s conversations with the homeless men—serious, funny, mysterious, poetic, and mundane.