Tours

"8" performed by Cello Octet Amsterdam

Thursday, May 30, 2019 - 8:15pm

The Amsterdam Cello Octet cannot be missed during Dordt in Cello. This octet makes the work of a composer a true, enchanting experience. Michael Gorden's '8' is on the program tonight. Not only the Cello Octet Amsterdam brings the composer Michael Gordon into ecstasy - you are also drawn into it as an audience.

Dordtyard
Dordrecht, Netherlands

Exalted performed by Kronos Quartet and San Francisco Girls Choir

Thursday, May 30, 2019 - 7:30pm

Kronos Festival 2019 kicks off with the Bay Area premiere of Stacy Garrop’s Glorious Mahalia, a work that celebrates gospel singer Mahalia Jackson through the words and spirit of oral historian and activist Studs Terkel. The San Francisco Girls Chorus, conducted by Valérie Sainte-Agathe, joins Kronos to perform Michael Gordon’s requiem Exalted. Throughout the evening, writer Rebecca Solnit and others perform Voices of a People’s History, which brings to life the extraordinary stories of Americans who helped shape the country’s social movements. The Ruth Asawa San Francisco School of the Arts’ Dragon String Quartet opens the show with Rhiannon Giddens’ composition for Kronos’ Fifty for the Future education initiative. More details to be announced; check below for up-to-date program information.

 

SFJAZZ Center
San Francisco, CA

'Dystopia,' 'Gotham,' and 'El Sol Caliente' at Spoleto Festival USA

Sunday, May 26, 2019 - 7:00pm

Filmmaker Bill Morrison is renowned for artful and haunting techniques that forge new works out of archival, historical, and original footage. With powerful scores composed by Michael Gordon and performed by the Spoleto Festival USA Orchestra, Morrison has made three 30-minute films capturing the aura of three American cities: Gotham (2004) for New York, Dystopia (2008) for Los Angeles, and El Sol Caliente (2015) for Miami. Presented for the first time as a trilogy with live orchestra, City Symphonies celebrates character of place and how it evolves, pairing image and music to share the energy, chaos, and beauty of urban life.

Memminger Auditorium
Charleston, SC

'the little match girl passion' (for chorus) performed by Norwegian National Children's Opera

Saturday, May 25, 2019 to Sunday, May 26, 2019

In 2007, American composer David Lang created a choral work based on Hans Christian Andersen's history, by model of JS Bach's Matthew Passion . Where the story of Jesus' death is set against texts that reflect and comment on the action of the Passions, Lang interleaves other texts in the fairy tale about the little girl. These are texts by HP Paulli (the first to translate the adventure into English in 1872), Picander (the librettist of several of Bach's cantatas, including the Matthew Passion ), as well as excerpts from the Matthew Gospel itself. Lang uses these compilations to cut down the narrative to the basic feelings of history - expressed through music where the human voice is at the center.

The performance begins with Beth Morrison, producer and artistic director of the New Opera and Theater PROTOTYPE festival in New York City, giving an introduction to David Lang's music.

VOeX Festival
Den Norske Opera & Ballet
Oslo, Norway

Meredith Monk in Concert at The Jewish Museum

Thursday, May 23, 2019 - 8:00pm

Renowned composer/performer Meredith Monk offers a rare, intimate concert—her premiere at the Jewish Museum—with members of her Vocal Ensemble, Katie Geissinger and Allison Sniffin. The concert reflects Monk’s six decades of innovation and vocal mastery, and parallels the exhibition Leonard Cohen: A Crack in Everything, exploring Cohen's inspiring, influential, and enduring legacy. 

Scheuer Auditorium, The Jewish Museum
New York, NY

'the little match girl passion' performed by OS Ensemble

Sunday, May 19, 2019 - 7:00pm

Rothko’s Chapel, a non-denominational, broadly ecumenical center, was designed by Jewish abstract expressionist artist Mark Rothko (born Markus Yakovlevich Rothkowitz). Originally conceived of as a Catholic chapel, the deeply spiritual, but abstract work of Rothko was quickly felt to be more fitting for a place of holiness open to all religions, belonging to none.

It was this work of Rothko’s that inspired Morton Feldman’s epic masterwork Rothko’s Chapel (1971). A work of great abstraction and spiritual depth, Rothko’s Chapel begins in what Feldman describes a "synagoguey type of way” and ends with what Feldman called a “quasi-Hebraic” melody in the Viola. In 2007 David Lang’s Little Match Girl Passion, self-consciously attempted to secularize and universalize the Passion story, by setting a Hans Christian Anderson fable in the manner of a J. S. Bach Passion. In both of these works abstraction, and universalization, are Jewish responses to being in dialogue with artistic representations of Christian spirituality.

Join us for a performance of these two choral masterworks featuring the young artists of the OS Ensemble, led by Raquel Acevedo-Klein, including the performance of a new secular sacred work by composer Adam Roberts, commissioned for the occasion.

Following the performance there will be a panel discussion on the evening’s compositions and the topic of secular sacred art and music more broadly which will feature composers David Lang and Adam Roberts as well as Kath Rothko Prizel.

YIVO Institute for Jewish Research
Center for Jewish History
New York, NY

'make peace' performed by The Esoterics

Friday, May 17, 2019 - 8:00pm

In the second program of its 26th concert season, The Esoterics will unveil the potential power of human togetherness, INCLUSIVITY. This performance will trace the origins of “otherness” in our first moments of life and explore how these emotions develop into exclusion at both the interpersonal and societal levels, resulting in divisiveness, xenophobia, shunning, persecution, violence, and the loneliness and wandering of exile. This program will also advocate for philoxenia – the desire to show hospitality and acceptance of strangers – which promotes the idea that we are stronger together, as an interdependent human community.

Live Music Project: Seattle
St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church
Seattle, WA

'gift' performed by Shank-Hagedorn Duo

Sunday, May 5, 2019 - 7:30pm

The Butler string area is very pleased to present concert violinist Leslie Shank and guitarist Joseph Hagedorn in a duo recital. They will be performing a recital of old and new music, including 'gift' by David Lang.

Butler University Duckwall Artist Series
Indianapolis, IN

'she is called' performed by the Brooklyn Youth Chorus

Thursday, May 2, 2019 to Sunday, May 5, 2019

Silent Voices: Lovestate, the third installment in the Silent Voices series, builds on the success of its earlier premieres at BAM’s Howard Gilman Opera House, National Sawdust, and Prototype Festival, in a program including stand-out works from the earlier series and new premieres. In Lovestate, a dynamic roster of composers and artists collaborate with the choristers in confronting the challenges of division and categorization, racism, sexism, immigration, threats to our environment and our understanding of truth, as we seek to affirm our vision of a more inclusive and compassionate future—a world we can all look forward to. Unifying this musically and topically broad work is the distinctively versatile and beautiful sound of the rigorously-trained singers—a chorus of culturally and socioeconomically diverse New York City young people, ages 12–18. Commissioned composers for Lovestate include: Pulitzer Prize winners David Lang and Caroline Shaw, Olga Bell, Nico Muhly, Angélica Negrón, Shara Nova, Paola Prestini, Toshi Reagon, Shaina Taub, and Bora Yoon.

New Victory Theater
New York, NY

'make peace' performed by Arizona Repertory Singers

Sunday, April 28, 2019 - 3:00pm

Psalm settings by C.V. Stanford, Arthur Honegger and James Macmillan. Music reflecting the “Song of Songs” by John Dunstable and Edward Bairstow; Purer than purest pure, a setting of poetry by e.e. cummings by UA composer Daniel Asia, and Make peace, a brand new work by David Lang.

Temple Emanu-el
Tuscon, AZ

'the little match girl passion' performed by VoNo

Sunday, April 28, 2019

Hans Christian Andersen's story tells of a vulnerable existence, but in the middle of the dark there is a shimmer of bright memories and hope. It inspired American composer David Lang to compose his suggestive and painfully beautiful The Little Match Girl Passion, shaped in the same form as JS Bach's Matthew Passion.

Folkoperan
Stockholm, Sweden

'low resolution' and Spinning Jenny performed by Jennifer Koh

Tuesday, April 9, 2019 - 8:00pm

Inspired by Paganini’s landmark set of 24 caprices, Jennifer’s project Shared Madness asks “What is the relationship between the violinist and the instrument?” The project explores virtuosity in the 21st century and is comprised of short works for solo violin from some of today’s most celebrated composers, including Phillip Glass, Bryce Dessner (from The National), Kaija Saariaho, and Julia Wolfe (co-founder of Bang on a Can). It premiered at the New York Philharmonic’s 2nd Biennial in June 2016.

Fox Cabaret
Vancouver, Canada

Bearthoven: False Harmonics 3.0 at Pioneer Works

Tuesday, April 9, 2019 - 8:00pm

Bearthoven performs the NYC premieres of Sarah Hennies’s Spectral Malsconcities and Katherine Balch’s Trio* on the False Harmonics 3.0 Series at Pioneer Works in Red Hook, Brooklyn.

The Luisa Muhr/Wendy Eisenberg Duo will be performing the first set of the evening.

*This commission has been made possible by the Chamber Music America Classical Commissioning Program, with generous funding provided by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the Chamber Music America Endowment Fund.

Pioneer Works
Brooklyn, NY

'ever-present' performed by Bryce Dessner, David Chalmi and the Labèque Sisters (UK premiere)

Tuesday, April 9, 2019 - 7:30pm

Acclaimed pianists, sisters Katia and Marielle Labèque, are renowned for their energetic double act and their passion for minimalist music. In 2013 they released an album entitled Minimalist Dream House, featuring works by minimal music pioneers and their successors.

The Labèques now continue their journey, which started with the album, with a series of live concerts, with the Barbican date also featuring Bryce Dessner (guitar) and David Chalmin (guitar, voice, live-electronic).

Here the sisters and their guests will perform works by American composers David Lang, Caroline Shaw, Bryce Dessner, Timo Andres, French composer David Chalmin and a new work by Radiohead front man Thom Yorke.

Minimalism developed in the USA in the 1960s as a music genre that brought together what had been thought to be incompatible: it was new and experimental, while also being clear, honest and melodious. Through constant repetition, the radically simplified musical language unleashed new energies and soon became influential in genres ranging from krautrock and pop to techno.

Barbican Hall
London, United Kingdom

'ever-present' performed by Bryce Dessner, David Chalmi and the Labèque Sisters

Monday, April 8, 2019 - 8:00pm

Foreign to all musical hermetism, the Labèque sisters put the same requirement when they collaborate with the greatest note teps composers (Berio, Boesmans, Golijov or Glass) or share the stage with percussion, guitars, jazzmen and dancers. To celebrate 50 years of minimalism, they had imagined a Minimalist Dream House to house the works of the pioneers of the movement and those they influenced. They continue today by interpreting the American succession (David Lang, Caroline Shaw, Bryce Dessner), the unknown Julius Eastman, and a much anticipated creation of Thom Yorke.

Lyon National Orchestra
Lyon, France

Meredith Monk: Cellular Songs & Quartet Concert at Stanford University

Saturday, April 6, 2019 - 7:30pm

Meredith Monk is honored worldwide as a composer, singer, director, choreographer, and performance pioneer. For over 50 years she has been creating genredefying work, evoking feelings, energies, and memories for which there are no words. On April 6, Monk and the Vocal Ensemble pair voice with movement, instrumentation, and video in Cellular Songs, a work inspired by biological processes of the fundamental unit of life that can serve as a prototype for human behavior in our tumultuous world.

Bing Concert Hall, Stanford University
Palo Alto, CA

'she is called' performed by the Brooklyn Youth Chorus

Monday, April 1, 2019 - 3:00pm

Silent Voices: Lovestate, the third installment in the Silent Voices series, builds on the success of its earlier premieres at BAM’s Howard Gilman Opera House, National Sawdust, and Prototype Festival, in a program including stand-out works from the earlier series and new premieres. In Lovestate, a dynamic roster of composers and artists collaborate with the choristers in confronting the challenges of division and categorization, racism, sexism, immigration, threats to our environment and our understanding of truth, as we seek to affirm our vision of a more inclusive and compassionate future—a world we can all look forward to. Unifying this musically and topically broad work is the distinctively versatile and beautiful sound of the rigorously-trained singers—a chorus of culturally and socioeconomically diverse New York City young people, ages 12–18. Commissioned composers for Lovestate include: Pulitzer Prize winners David Lang and Caroline Shaw, Olga Bell, Nico Muhly, Angélica Negrón, Shara Nova, Paola Prestini, Toshi Reagon, Shaina Taub, and Bora Yoon.

Kennedy Center
Washington, D.C.

Bearthoven at West Chester University

Tuesday, March 26, 2019 - 7:30pm

Bearthoven Performs Scott Wollschleger’s American Dream, Shelley Washington’s Silk, and the world premiere of Trio by Katie Balch* at West Chester University in West Chester, Pennsylvania.

*This commission has been made possible by the Chamber Music America Classical Commissioning Program, with generous funding provided by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the Chamber Music America Endowment Fund.

West Chester University
West Chester, PA

'public domain' performed by London Symphony

Sunday, March 24, 2019 - 6:00pm

Enter into the discordant and energetically disorienting sound world of Philippe Manoury’s Ring, written for large ‘spatialised’ orchestra and extended percussion. Steel drums, timbales and anvils all feature in this new musical experience, as LSO musicians are scattered throughout the Barbican Hall.

Scriabin’s Symphony Fourth Symphony, The Poem of Ecstasy, depicts a cosmic spirit’s assent into consciousness, the ‘joy of liberated action, a divine play of worlds’ according to the composer. The piece seems to alternate between slow, unhurried languor and striving energy, all based around the composer’s new modes of tonality giving the end product an ethereal sense of musical mysticism. 

Barbican Centre foyer
London, United Kingdom

Meredith Monk: Cellular Songs Concert at Big Ears Festival

Thursday, March 21, 2019 to Sunday, March 24, 2019

Using little more than her voice and her singular vision, Meredith Monk has become nothing less than an icon. During the last half-century, she has been one of the pioneers of extended vocal techniques, not only inventing or refining many of its methods but also pushing them into pop culture itself. Breaking boundaries between music, theater, and performance art, and then between her magnetic concerts and her landmark albums for ECM, Monk “has communicated across genre boundaries long before ‘crossover’ was even a term,” as The Washington Post has noted. 

Only a year after its world premiere at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Monk returns to Big Ears with a rare performance of her latest concert-length work, Cellular Songs. Cellular Songs examines life on the microscopic level, exploring and expressing biological processes like cell division and genetic mutation through the ineffable talents of her Vocal Ensemble and a stage show of video, lights, and theater. Monk and her cadre of singers build an overwhelming array of music from tiny sounds that bend and move at will, just as a body is built from millions of cells interacting on their own terms. It makes no matter that Monk is a MacArthur fellow, a recipient of the National Medal of Arts, and an Obie winner—her music remains at the cutting edge of contemporary art, an attempt to articulate phenomenon and feelings with which even language can sometimes struggle.

Big Ears Festival
Knoxville, TN

'the writings' performed by Theatre of Voices (world premiere)

Wednesday, March 20, 2019 - 7:30pm

When Theatre of Voices performed Stockhausen’s epic Stimmung at Carnegie Hall, The New York Times praised the ensemble's performance as “confident and luminous, controlled yet free …” Theatre of Voices returns to give the New York premiere of an Arvo Pärt work accompanied with a film by award-winning Danish director Phie Ambo. Paul Hillier, Theatre of Voices' artistic director, conducted the world premiere of David Lang’s the little match girl passion and the ensemble recorded it to tremendous acclaim. Both reacquaint themselves with Lang’s music in the writings—the world premiere of the complete cycle. 

Carnegie Hall Zankel Hall
New York , NY

Sō at Longwood Gardens (PA)

Thursday, March 14, 2019 - 8:00pm

With innovative multi-genre original productions, sensational interpretations of modern classics, and an “exhilarating blend of precision and anarchy, rigor and bedlam” (The New Yorker), Sō Percussion has redefined the scope and vital role of the modern percussion ensemble. Programmed for curious audiences, their inventive repertoire and instrumentation spans anything between a snare drum and a flower pot.

Longwood Gardens
Philadelphia, PA

'the little match girl passion' performed by UCLA Chamber Singers

Monday, March 11, 2019 - 8:00pm

The UCLA Chamber Singers presents one of the most celebrated choral works of the last twenty years. David Lang’s Pulitzer and Grammy winning masterpiece reinvents the sounds of the choir while telling the tragic story of the nameless match girl. The concert will be in the beautiful acoustic and space of the St. Albans Church, Westwood.

St. Albans Church
Westwood, CA

Donnacha Dennehy: The Second Violinist performed by the Dutch National Opera in Amsterdam

Thursday, March 7, 2019 to Saturday, March 9, 2019

A sensational modern opera, The Second Violinist is a brooding thriller electrified by an otherworldly, almost compulsive score. This is the result of an artistic partnership between world-renowned Irish playwright Enda Walsh – co-author of Bowie’s musical Lazarus – and composer Donnacha Dennehy.

The Second Violinist is about an ordinary person whose life is ruled by social media, morbid fantasies and violent video games. Seeking solace and beauty in a grim world, the violin player turns to the music of Italian Renaissance composer Carlo Gesualdo, only to have it become an obsession. The Second Violinistwon the prestigious FEDORA–GENERALI award in 2017.

Muziekgebouw
Amsterdam, Netherlands

'just (after song of songs)' performed by the San Francisco Girls Choir

Sunday, March 3, 2019 - 4:00pm

The San Francisco Girls Chorus builds upon its award-winning commitment to music of our time with a concert featuring works from a group of luminary contemporary composers. Highlighted by the World Premiere performance of an SFGC commission from avant-rock and improvisational composer Fred Frith, the program includes music by American minimalist Steve Reich, film composer David Lang, jazz saxophonist John Zorn, and prominent Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho. The chorus will be joined by contralto Kristen Sollek, who will make her SFGC debut as soloist in Vaughan Williams’ rarely heard Magnificat.

San Francisco Conservatory of Music
San Francisco, CA

Meredith Monk: Cellular Songs

Saturday, March 2, 2019 - 8:00pm

West Coast Premiere

"At once visceral and ethereal, raw and rapt, Monk's works banish the spurious complexities of urban life and reveal a kind of underground civilization, one that sings, dances, and meditates on timeless forces." —The New Yorker

Meredith Monk has spent more than five decades exploring and expanding the capacity of that most essential instrument – the human voice. Cellular Songs is the newest in a series of her music theater pieces that explore our interdependent relationship with nature while seeking to evoke the ineffable. 

Following the celebrated On Behalf of Nature, which offered a liminal space questioning the precarious state of our global ecology, Cellular Songs turns attention inward to the very fabric of life itself. Joined by the women of her acclaimed Vocal Ensemble, Monk combines some of her most adventurous vocal music to date with movement, light, instrumental music and film, as well as a video installation designed specifically for each space. 

The work, at once playful and contemplative, draws inspiration from such cellular activity as layering, replication, division and mutation, and looks to underlying systems in nature that can serve as a prototype for human behavior in our tumultuous world. Conjuring cycles of birth and death throughout, Monk once again reminds us of her vitality as an artist who cuts to the core of experience, continuing to share the genius of her discovery and innovation.

UCLA Center for the Art of Performance
Los Angeles, CA

Ethel performs all Wolfe string quartets at Jewish Museum

Thursday, February 28, 2019

The acclaimed contemporary string quartet ETHEL performs the complete string quartets of Pulitzer prize winning composer Julia Wolfe: Dig DeepEarly that SummerFour Marys, and Blue Dress for String Quartet. This is the first performance of all of Wolfe's string quartets at one time, on one stage.  

Julia Wolfe's string quartets, as described by The New Yorker, "combine the violent forward drive of rock music with an aura of minimalist serenity [using] the four instruments as a big guitar, whipping psychedelic states of mind into frenzied and ecstatic climaxes." This performance is presented in conjunction with the exhibition of fellow New York City cultural icon Martha Rosler: Irrespective

 

 

Jewish Museum
New York City, NY

'love fail' performed by Oriana Women's Choir

Saturday, February 23, 2019 - 8:00pm

Contemporary composer David Lang’s love fail has been called a meditation on the timelessness of love weaving texts from Tristan and Isolde, adapted by the composer from a variety of source texts, together with contemporary poetry by Lydia Davis. The SSAA piece was originally scored for a vocal quartet, and in our performance, audiences will be delighted to hear the full ensemble as well as a variety of quartets and octets, showing off the range of voices of Oriana. This performance marks the Canadian première of the choral arrangement.

Calvin Presbyterian Church
Toronto, Canada

Detroit, MI—Become Ocean

Saturday, February 23, 2019 to Sunday, February 24, 2019

Leonard Slatkin brings the American Music festival to a close with works by Kristin Kuster, Barber’s haunting Violin Concerto, Bernstein’s West Side Story, and the startling silence of John Cage on Thursday and Friday. On Saturday and Sunday, minimalist percussion masterworks of Steve Reich and Philip Glass, plus John Luther Adams’s visionary Pulitzer Prize-winning Become Ocean.

Artists
Leonard Slatkin, conductor
Joseph Becker, percussion
Andres Pichardo, percussion
Jeremy Epp, timpani
James Ritchie, timpani

Program
STEVE REICH Clapping Music
PHILIP GLASS Concerto Fantasy for Two Timpanists & Orchestra
JOHN LUTHER ADAMS Become Ocean

Max M. & Marjorie S. Fisher Music Center
Detroit, MI

'the loser' performed by LA Opera

Friday, February 22, 2019 - 8:00pm to Saturday, February 23, 2019 - 8:00pm

Two piano prodigies at a master class encounter an even greater talent: the virtuoso Glenn Gould, on the cusp of superstardom. The devastating realization that they will never approach their new rival’s level of artistry changes their lives forever. A painful meditation on dreams forsaken and hopes unrealized unfolds in an unusually intimate staging that incorporates multiple levels of the spectacular Theatre at Ace Hotel. Composer David Lang returns to LA Opera for the first time since his spellbinding anatomy theater. (Note: as was the case with anatomy theater, the title of the loser is spelled in lowercase.) In an intimate work for baritone, piano and chamber ensemble, the loser stars Rod Gilfry, in a role he created for the work’s premiere at the pathbreaking Bang on a Can festival.

The Theatre at Ace Hotel
Los Angeles, CA

'manifesto' performed by The Esoterics

Friday, February 22, 2019 to Sunday, February 24, 2019

In the first program of its 26th concert season, The Esoterics will explore the human capacity for openness, VULNERABILITY. On the weekend that follows Valentine’s Day, our society’s celebration of romantic love, this performance will follow the emotional journey of lowering of one’s defenses, from expressing desire and devotion, challenging authority and conformity, risking injury, gaining consent, healing from brokenness, navigating through resentfulness, arriving at forgiveness, and emerging again into the world, ready to be vulnerable yet again.

Giving voice to texts by James Baldwin, Olympe de Gouges, Bei Dao, Paul Laurence Dunbar, e. e. cummings, Hāfez, Jennifer Powers, Rainier Maria Rilke, Rabindranath Tagore, and William Carlos Williams, The Esoterics’ VULNERABILITY will include music by Abbie Betinis, Anna-Karin Klockar, Evan Flory-Barnes, Reena Esmail, Ted Hearne, Jennifer Higdon, David Lang, Tebogo Monnakgotla, Roxanna Panufnik, August Read Thomas, Mari Ésabel Valverde, and a commissioned world premiere by New York composer Philip Wharton.

Seattle, WA

TwoSense play at Cal State Uni Fullerton

Thursday, February 21, 2019 - 7:00pm

Ashley Bathgate, cello and Lisa Moore, piano – the incredible TwoSense duo perform together again in LA at the New Music Festival in CSUF.

Program tbc:

Family Matters – Paul Dresher

Velvet – Kate Moore

New Work – Pamela Madsen

Spun – Amy Kirsten

Prayers Remain Forever – Martin Bresnick

 

Cal State Uni Fullerton, Meng Concert Hall
Fullerton, CA

Shelter performed by Casa da Música Remix Ensemble

Tuesday, February 19, 2019 - 7:30pm

The universe of Shelter evokes the power and the threat of nature, the promise of expanding the boundaries contained within the structure of a new home, the pure aesthetic beauty of houseplants, the sweet architecture of sound and the apprehensive vulnerability that exists even in the safety of sleep. A profound and moving reflection on the meaning of having a shelter with music performed by the founders of the New York group Bang on a Can. The beautiful images of Shelter, Bill Morrison’s film with music by David Lang, Michael Gordon and Julia Wolfe, is only comparable to the magic of the music, the energy of the rhythm and the purity of the vocal writing.

Casa da Música
Sala Suggia
Porto, Portugal

Pages