News

In fraught times like these, everyone needs to step up for what's right. We extend our deepest condolences to George Floyd’s family, friends, and the larger Minneapolis community, and we stand in solidarity with our black colleagues, fellow musicians, and loved ones across the country and around the world.

Please join us in donating to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, and let's work together to actualize racial justice and positive change for the future.

With concert halls and opera houses closed around the world as part of bans on large gatherings aimed at curbing the coronavirus outbreak, what are homebound classical critics to do? Listen to favorite recordings of the music they were scheduled to hear live, of course! Enjoy.

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for an exclusive New York Times preview of Meredith Monk's “Double Fiesta,” from her forthcoming album MEMORY GAME with the Bang on a Can All-Stars.

There was a time, within living memory for many of us, when composers, critics, and listeners could have knock-down, drag-out fights (or the somewhat more genteel, but still vehement, classical-music equivalent) about which of the many contemporary “isms” was the true musical language of our time...

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ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON, NY: The 2019 Bard SummerScape festival takes a contemporary look at Hollywood’s Golden Age in Acquanetta, a visual and musical tour-de-force inspired by the eponymous B-movie star with a mysterious past.

Combining theater, opera, and film in a haunting meditation on identity, transformation, stereotypes, and typecasting from composer and Bang on a Can co-founder Michael Gordon and his longtime collaborator, librettist Deborah Artman, Acquanetta originally premiered at the PROTOTYPE Festival, where it was a New York Times and New York magazine “Critics’ Pick” and one of the New York Classical Review’s “Top Ten Performances of 2018.”

To celebrate the official July 19 release of the Acquanetta recording on Cantaloupe Music, Bard will host a pre-release party on Friday, July 12.

Acquanetta is produced by Beth Morrison Projects, with scenic design by Lucille Lortel Award-nominee Amy Rubin and video design by Joshua Higgason.

ORDER YOUR TICKETS HERE

This season, the New York Philharmonic, led by their new Music Director Jaap van Zweden, examines New York City's roots as a destination of immigrants during New York Stories: Threads of Our City. The centerpiece for the season is the world premiere, on January 24–26, of Julia Wolfe’s Fire in my mouth, commissioned by the orchestra, Cal Performances at the University of California, Berkeley; the Krannert Center at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and the University Musical Society at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

Wolfe's music focuses on the garment industry in New York City at the turn of the century — specifically the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, which killed 146 garment workers, most of them young, female immigrants. The immersive, multimedia performance features the Philharmonic debut of the 36 women of the chamber choir The Crossing, directed by Donald Nally, as well as the Philharmonic debut of Jeff Sugg as scenic, lighting, video, and projection designer.

TICKETS available now

BANG ON A CAN MARATHON
@ NYU Skirball Center
Sunday, May 13, 2018, 12-10pm
10 hours of FREE Live Music!

Bang on a Can returns to downtown Manhattan with its annual incomparable super-mix of boundary-busting music from around the corner and around the world! The 2018 Bang on a Can Marathon will feature 10 hours of rare performances by some of the most innovative musicians of our time, side-by-side with some of today’s most pioneering young artists.

HIghlights include Terry Riley's Autodreamographical Tales, performed by the Bang on a Can All-Stars and Terry Riley (voice). The piece was inspired by a dream diary Riley kept in 1987, and flows in and out of Indian raga, New Age music and bluesy textures. Other highlights include Vicky Chow's performance of Michael Gordon's Sonatra; Stephin Merritt's set with cellist Sam Davol, his Magnetic Fields bandmate; and performances by the Flux Quartet, Contemporaneous and Xenia Rubinos.

More information is available at Bang on a Can's official website, and at NYU Skirball online.

Tickets still available (click here)

Maya Beiser and David Lang, with special guest actor Kate Valk, celebrate the release of their new Cantaloupe Music album, the day, with a live performance at Paula Cooper Gallery. Receive a download of the new album with your ticket purchase. Doors at 7:30PM, performance starts at 8PM.

Composed by David Lang, the day was commissioned in 2016 by cellist Maya Beiser as a “prequel” to world to come (2003), which Lang also wrote for Beiser in response to the tragic events of 9/11. Both pieces are meditations on life, but from very different perspectives.

“'the day' looks at ways we review our lives,” Lang explains, “exploring remembered moments as a chronicle of a life.” Lang sourced the text from the internet by searching for the phrase “I remember the day that I...,” and then cut and compiled lyrics based on his findings. The spoken word accompaniment by actor Kate Valk lends an emotional charge to Beiser’s poignant cello lines, which gradually build in multi-tracked layers to emulate a small string ensemble.

In 'world to come', Beiser echoes the cello with her own voice, with the separation between the two growing more pronounced as the piece progresses. It’s a metaphor for the separation of the soul from the body at the moment of death, and their struggle to reunite in a peaceful, post-apocalyptic spiritual world.