News

2017 Bang on a Can Summer Festival @ MASS MoCA Begins!

Thursday, July 20, 2017
Nick Photinos conducts an ensemble in MASS MoCA's "tall gallery"

Nick Photinos conducts an ensemble in MASS MoCA's "tall gallery"

From now through August 5th, catch multiple concerts a day in potentially every gallery space in MASS MoCA by performer and composer fellows of the Bang on a Can Summer Festival (aka Banglewood), including swaths of world premieres, and a first workshopping of Gordon/Lang/Wolfe's upcoming collaborative work "Road Trip". 

Take a look at the festival schedule, which features 1:30p and 4:30p recitals nearly every day, including solo shows by Bang on a Can All-Stars and festival faculty.

Festival Schedule

July 20-21, July 24-28, and 31-Aug 4 the festival fellows present recitals at 1:30 all over the galleries!

Weds July 19, 4:30pm - Mark Stewart performs the music of Pauline Oliveros & all folks present(!) on the wonderful musical instruments of Gunnar Schonbeck. The Return of the 9 foot Banjo!! Come and join in. No experience required.

Thurs July 20, 4:30pm - Ashley Bathgate performs  new works for solo cello by Martin Bresnick, Emily Cooley, Pamela Madsen, Jascha Narveson, Alex Weiser, and the world premiere of It Is Not A City by Randall Woolf, with the poetry of Tongo Eisen-Martin.

Fri July 21, 4:30pm - The keyboard duo of Ray/Kallay (Vicki Ray and Aron Kallay) will play two works for microtonal keyboards by Dylan Mattingly and Rand Steiger. Also - Vicki will play three short works for solo piano: spring and greene by David Lang, On Debrosses Steet by Michael Gordon and East Broadway by Julia Wolfe.

Fri July 21, 10pm - The Bang-MoCA MASSive Latin Big Band led by Gregg August, Joe Gonzalez, and Ben Lapidus, the Bang on a Can fellows perform for free at the American Legion bar. Bring your dancing shoes.

Sat July 22, 4:30pm - Karl Larson plays Robert Honstein's Grand Tour for Solo Piano

Saturday, July 22, 11:30am KIDS CAN TOO! Our annual perforance for kids. tickets

Saturday, July 29, 4:30pm - A tribute to Pauline Oliveros

Saturday, July 29, 8pm - Bang on a Can All-Stars ROAD TRIP
Bang on a Can co-artistic directors Michael Gordon, David Lang, and Julia Wolfe have collaborated to create  Road Trip, an evening-length work for the Bang on a Can All-Stars, directed by Michael Counts with rock show lighting and projections designed by CandyStations.  The piece is about journeys and people who make them. Physical journeys, geographical journeys, emotional journeys, spiritual journeys.  There is a road, but it is no simple highway. tickets

Sunday, July 30, 4:30pm - Mark Stewart and festival fellows perform on the spectacularly original instruments of Gunnar Schoenbeck, an new exhibit at MASS MoCA, curated by Mark!

Monday, July 31, 4:30pm WORLD PREMIERE COMPOSER CONCERT Over 40 young composers and performers from around the world debut NINE NEW WORKS written especially for the festival.

Tuesday, Aug 1, 4:30pm - Music from Central Asia - Musicians from Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan perform on traditional instruments from their countries, including the chopo choor, rubab, and dombra.

Wednesday, Aug 2, 4:30pm - Festival fellows perform the sextet version of Philip Glass' monumental Symphony #3, and the minimalist classic Music for Similar Motion

Wednesday, Aug 2, 7pm CONCERT AT THE LAKE Our annual blow-out avant-variety show!! Bring a blanket! WINDSOR LAKE, NORTH ADAMS | FREE

Thursday, Aug 3, 4:30pm - Festival fellows perform works by a pioneer of electronic and interactive music, George Lewis.

Thursday, Aug 3, 7:30pm  - A special concert with this year's guest composer, Dutch master Louis Andriessen.

Aug 3, 4 - 10pm AFTER HOURS AT THE CHALET Spontaneous music with the fellows in our summer beer garden, which careens wildly from bluegrass to jazz to salsa to avant-ballads.

Friday, Aug 4, 4:30pm - Festival fellows perform music by downtown New York's alt-vocal maverick Meredith Monk.

Saturday, Aug 5, 4–10pm BANG ON A CAN MARATHON
More musical "happening" than concert, the Bang on a Can Marathon closes out the Festival in suitably audacious style. The eclectic program includes works from our 2017 guest artist Louis Andriessen, as well as Steve Reich, Jeffrey Brooks, Michael Gordon, Judd Greenstein, David Lang, Vanessa Lann, Mary Jane Leach, Gyorgi Ligeti, Nicole Lizee, Dmitri Tymoczko, Lois V Vierk, and Julia Wolfe. Share the experience with hundreds of adventurous listeners, dozens of brilliant performers, great food and drink and of course, big bold art EVERYwhere. tickets

Coming to Lincoln Center: Gong Linna & Bang on a Can All-Stars

Thursday, July 6, 2017

Enter the world of the gods, spirits and shamans of ancient Chinese myths and poetry in this evening-length work co-composed by Lao Luo and Bang on a Can co-artistic directors Michael Gordon, David Lang and Julia Wolfe.

Cloud River Mountain is an edgy cross-cultural collaboration between the Bang on a Can All-Stars and the extraordinary Chinese vocalist Gong Linna. Channeling the otherworldly and experimental spirit of Björk with her adventurous range, Linna embraces Chinese folk, pop, and avant-garde art music with a sure-footed confidence that transcends borders. On Cloud River Mountain, she sings in both Mandarin and English over the groove-driven melodies and lush soundscapes of the All-Stars, weaving ancient Chinese storytelling together with Western songwriting in a raucous musical mix.

WHEN: Fri/Sat July 14 and 15, 8PM
WHERE: Lincoln Center's Gerald W. Lynch Theater
PRICE: $25 (general), $55 (premium seating)

Order your tickets from Lincoln Center today

Bang on a Can at MoMA

Monday, May 22, 2017

Throughout Robert Rauschenberg’s six-decade career, he moved freely between the worlds of visual art and avant-garde music. Beginning in the early 1950s, he worked closely with the composers and performers associated with the New York School, including such pioneering experimental figures as Earle Brown, John Cage, Morton Feldman, David Tudor and Christian Wolff. This rich dialogue shaped Rauschenberg’s approach to art making as well as that of his musical collaborators. In conjunction with the exhibition Robert Rauschenberg: Among Friends, Pulitzer prize–winning composer David Lang and the celebrated music collective Bang on a Can present a pair of concerts featuring commentary exploring these artistic exchanges and their legacy for contemporary music.

Tuesday May 23 and Wednesday May 24 at the Museum of Modern Art, NYC

Bang on a Can Marathon rocks Brooklyn

Monday, May 8, 2017

The class clowns who merrily threw spitballs at New York’s artistic landscape three decades ago are now, in more ways than one, seniors. That’s true at the Whitney Museum of American Art, where the exhibition “Fast Forward: Painting From the 1980s” makes a persuasive case for the maturity of a generation of supposed bad boys (and girls).

And it was true on Saturday in Brooklyn, where you could spend a few hours at the 30th-anniversary installment of the music collective Bang on a Can’s annual marathon concert, at the Brooklyn Museum, and then travel a mile or so up the road to Roulette, where the anarchic composer and performer John Zorn was holding court with works that were new during the Carter and Reagan years. At both events, onetime rebels had become institutions.

Continue reading at the New York Times online...

Anthracite Fields: New Adventures in Coal Country

Wednesday, April 5, 2017

Julia Wolfe onstage at Bucknell University before a performance of Anthracite Fields, her oratorio about coal mining. Photo: Mark Makela for The New York Times

Coal is never far from the surface in northeastern Pennsylvania — as a shared heritage, if not always as actual deposits. So anticipation was already running high last week when the composer Julia Wolfe brought Anthracite Fields, her Pulitzer Prize-winning choral work honoring the sacrifices of Pennsylvania coal miners, back to her native state.

Then, just before the concerts, coal became front-page news when President Trump moved to roll back pollution regulations in the name of trying to bring coal jobs back, promising miners and coal company executives assembled for a photo op that “you’re going back to work.” Ms. Wolfe’s 2014 oratorio on work, exploitation and unionization took on new overtones as coal became a central part of the Make America Great Again hymnal.

“It feels to me like kind of a romanticization of coal miners — and that doesn’t feel good,” Ms. Wolfe said of the president’s action before a performance of Anthracite Fields on Saturday at Bucknell University here in Lewisburg, a college town nestled between coal regions.

Read the full story.

Alarm Will Sound and Q2 Music’s Meet the Composer team up for their first “podcast album”

Monday, March 20, 2017

What happens when the composer shows up to the first rehearsal of his brand-new piece? Would a living Beethoven sue for intellectual property? Are you the hit, or are you in the hole? For this episode of Q2 Music's Meet the Composer, the producers collaborated with the 20-member chamber ensemble Alarm Will Sound and its conductor Alan Pierson — with whom MTC is partnering on the upcoming podcast album Splitting Adams (out April 21 on Cantaloupe Music) — to take a close look at the music of John Adams, specifically his two insanely difficult chamber symphonies. This episode offers unprecedented access to not only to the creative process, but the weird, woolly procedure of putting these massive pieces together.

Preorder Splitting Adams on iTunes here, and get an instant download of Alarm Will Sound's performance of Son of Chamber Symphony (Mvt. 3).

Bang on a Can Marathon Moves to Brooklyn Museum

Thursday, February 9, 2017
Meredith Monk and Theo Bleckmann, at the Bang on a Can Marathon in 2014.

Meredith Monk and Theo Bleckmann, at the Bang on a Can Marathon in 2014.

Credit Jake Naughton for The New York Times

The Bang on a Can Marathon will celebrate its 30th anniversary in a new home across the East River. After many years in downtown Manhattan, the annual eight-hour celebration of contemporary classical music will take place at the Brooklyn Museum on Saturday, May 6.

The concert will be a part of the museum’s yearlong project “A Year of Yes: Reimagining Feminism,” and will include works by Meredith Monk, Julia Wolfe and Joan La Barbara. Ms. Wolfe, a co-founder of Bang on a Can and a Pulitzer Prize winner, will present her piece “Steel Hammer,” a folk ballad about John Henry and other railroad tales.

The Young People’s Chorus of New York City will perform Ms. La Barbara’s “A Murmuration for Chibok,” and two marathon mainstays, the Crossfire Steel Orchestra and the Asphalt Orchestra, will play sets. Amir ElSaffar will bring his Two Rivers Ensemble, playing a blend of Iraqi music and contemporary jazz.

While previous marathons have been free, this performance will require admission to the museum (although admission is free after 5 p.m. on its Target First Saturdays program).

The first marathon was organized by Ms. Wolfe, Michael Gordon and David Lang in 1987 in a SoHo art gallery; it has since been an annual fixture of downtown genre-crossing experimentalism. More information is at bangonacan.org.

reblogged from The New York Times

Michael Gordon's TIMBER, Remixed by 12 A-List Artists

Wednesday, September 14, 2016
Michael Gordon - Timber Remix

Listen to Fennesz's remix of Michael Gordon/Mantra Percussion, and preorder the album of 12 A-list electronic producers.

(from Pitchfork)

Deerhoof’s Greg Saunier, Hauschka, Jóhann Jóhannsson, and others also contribute to Timber Remixed, performed by Mantra Percussion

Back in 2011, Bang on a Can’s Michael Gordon released a five-part composition called Timber. Gordon plans to release a remix album of a new recording of the piece, performed by percussion ensemble Mantra Percussion, called Timber Remixed, on October 28 via Cantaloupe Music. It features remixes from Squarepusher, Oneohtrix Point Never, Fennesz, Tim Hecker, Hauschka, Jóhann Jóhannsson, and more. The announcement is accompanied by the Fennesz remix. Stream it below. Timber Remixed will be released on a limited edition vinyl containing six of the remixes, along with a two CD package that includes all 12 remixes, with a bonus disc featuring Mantra Percussion’s live performance of the original composition.

Timber Remixed:

Disc 1:

01 Jóhann Jóhannsson 
02 Sam Pluta 
03 Tim Hecker 
04 Fennesz 
05 Oneohtrix Point Never 
06 Greg Saunier 
07 HPRIZM/High Priest of APC 
08 Ian Williams 
09 Squarepusher 
10 Ikue Mori 
11 Mira Calix 
12 Hauschka

Disc 2:

01 Mantra Percussion – Timber (live @ The Winter Garden, Bang on a Can Marathon)

Bang on a Can Summer Festival @ MASS MoCA Kicks Off

Wednesday, July 13, 2016

Karl Larson performs in the Tall Gallery at the 2014 Bang on a Can Summer Festival at MASS MoCA

The Bang on a Can Summer Music Festival at MASS MoCA, the annual musical utopia for innovative musicians in the beautiful Berkshire Mountains of Western Massachusetts, is officially underway in for its 14th year.

 

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Bang on a Can All-Stars on tour in Europe!

Tuesday, April 12, 2016
Bang on a Can All-Stars live

Saturday, April 16, 2016 - 4:00pm Black Diamond, Queens Hall Søren Kierkegaards Plads 1, Copenhagen, Denmark

Bang on a Can All-Stars and the Danish National Vocal Ensemble, conducted by Ralf Chaczewsky perform Julia Wolfe's Anthracite Fields at the Queens Hall at Black Diamond, the brand new extension of the Danish National Library.

More info and tickets

Sunday, April 17, 2016 - 7:30pm Barbican Centre London, United Kingdom

Bang on a Can All-Stars perform Field Recordings at the Barbican Centre, London:

Julia Wolfe, Reeling
Bryce Dessner, Letter 27
Dan Deacon, Sago An Ya Rev
Daniel Wohl, Holographic
Christian Marclay, Fade to Slide
Steve Reich, The Cave of Machpelah (excerpt from The Cave) 
Todd Reynolds, Seven Sundays
Ben Frost, Negative Ghostrider
Jóhan Jóhannsson, Hz
Alvin Lucier, Firewood
Richard Reed Parry, The Brief and Neverending Blur
Paula Matthusen, the ontology of an echo
Anna Clyne,  Wonderful Day 

More info and tickets

Wednesday, April 20, 2016 - 8:30pm De Doelen Rotterdam, Netherlands

Bang on a Can All-Stars will perform Julia Wolfe's Steel Hammer with Trio Mediaeval.

More info and tickets

Thursday, April 21, 2016 - 8:15pm Muziekgebouw Amsterdam, Netherlands

Bang on a Can All-Stars and Trio Mediaeval perform Julia Wolfe's Steel Hammer.

More info and tickets

Saturday, April 23, 2016 - 3:00pm - 10:30pm De Doelen Rotterdam, Netherlands

Bang on a Can brings its signature event, the Bang on a Can Marathon, to Rotterdam. With guests Ensemble Klang.

More info and tickets

The program:

PART 1: 3-4PM
David Lang, Sunray
Julia Wolfe, Believing
Michael Gordon, For Madeline
Steve Martland, Horses of Instruction
  - performed by the Bang on a Can All-Stars
    
PART 2: 5-6PM   
Brian Eno, Music for Airports (arr Michael Gordon, David Lang, Julia Wolfe, Evan Ziporyn)
   - performed by the Bang on a Can All-Stars and Codarts
    
PART 3: 6-7PM
Red Sofa Tafelmuziek: dinner with musicians and public 
    
PART 4: 7-7:30PM
Red Sofa Pre-Concert Talk with the Bang on a Can All-Stars & Others
    
PART 5: 8-10:30PM   
Oscar Bettison, ppop
Jan-Bas Bollen  Fuse
   - performed by Ensemble Klang

Louis Andriessen, Life (with films by Marijke Van Warmerdam)
Martyn Padding Fix/us
   - performed by the Bang on a Can All-Stars

Peter Adriaansz  Nu descendant un escalier
Tom Johnson  Narayana’s Cows
   - performed by Ensemble Klang

Christian Marclay, Fade to Slide with film (from Field Recordings
Anna Clyne, A Wonderful Day (from Field Recordings)
   - performed by the Bang on a Can All-Stars

Pete Harden, forgiven (world premiere)
   - performed by the Bang on a Can All-Stars & Ensemble Klang

Sō Percussion & Glenn Kotche: Drumkit Quartets @ Zankel Hall, 2/12

Wednesday, February 10, 2016
Glenn Kotche

Glenn Kotche's Drumkit Quartets is out February 26.

Glenn Kotche’s Drumkit Quartets explores the timbral, textural, melodic, and rhythmic possibilities of the drumkit through a series of pieces that were all written in different cities while Kotche was touring extensively with his rock band, Wilco. The quartets are paired with Kotche’s Migrations, which plays in the softest range of the instruments, with the players using fingers, bows, and even hair combs to coax the sounds out. In the second half of the program, Steve Mackey’s Before It Is Time features vocalist Shara Worden of My Brightest Diamond with the percussion group, in a piece inspired by the poetry of Isaac Maliya. The evening culminates with a Timeline, a sort of companion piece to Before It Is Time, composed by Sō Percussion and Shara Worden together.

 Tickets On Sale Now

So Percussion performs "It Is Time" by Steven Mackey

Year-End Hit Lists

Saturday, January 9, 2016

Grammy Nomination for Best Contemporary Classical Composition
for Julia Wolfe's Anthracite Fields

NPR Music's Favorite Songs Of 2015
featuring the Bang on a Can All-Stars' "An Open Cage," composed by Florent Ghys

NYT Classical Reviews (Jan 4)
featuring Ilimaq (John Luther Adams & Glenn Kotche)

Rhapsody's Best of 2015: Top 10 Classical Discoveries
featuring Ilimaq and Anthracite Fields

Washington Post's Year in Classical Music (Anne Midgette)
featuring David Lang's the difficulty of crossing a field

John Schaefer's Top 10 for 2015 (WNYC/New Sounds)
featuring Ilimaq

John Diliberto's Top 25 of 2015 (Echoes)
featuring Contact's Discreet Music

Seth Colter Walls (Pitchfork) - Top 50 from 2015 (all genres)
featuring Ilimaq at #33

Stay tuned for more as we gear up to celebrate Cantaloupe's 15th anniversary this year!

Available now: ILIMAQ

Friday, October 30, 2015

When John Luther Adams first conceived of the percussion-driven roots of Ilimaq in the mid-1990s, he was still uncertain of what direction the music wanted to take, and whether it could sustain itself as a sound installation or as a fully developed performance piece. Glenn Kotche, who happened to be a fan of JLA's work, and reached out to him when Wilco was on tour in Alaska in 2008, turned out to be the collaborator Adams was looking for. A drummer himself, JLA began to envision a piece of music that would demand physical endurance, mental stamina and in turn, almost a "trance state" from the performer. And as he writes in the liner notes for Ilimaq: "All these years later, in Glenn Kotche, I've found the drummer I always imagined I could be."

Ilimaq merges ambient soundscapes, based on electro-acoustic and environmental sounds that were recorded and edited by Adams in Alaska, with the powerhouse drumming of Kotche, who recorded his parts at Wilco's loft studio in Chicago. Split into five sections but meant to be a continuous listening experience, the 48-minute piece conjures up multi-hued references to the work of Brian Eno, Luc Ferrari and even Can and Cream, all in the course of a dream-like "spirit journey" that lives up to the original Iñupiaq (Alaska Inuit) meaning of the word.

You can get the double-disc package now (in stereo and 5.1 surround sound) at the Bang on a Can store.

John Luther Adams & Glenn Kotche: ILIMAQ

Julia Wolfe on NPR's All Things Considered

Monday, September 28, 2015

Back in April, Julia Wolfe received a call at her loft space in New York, and ignored it. The the 57-year-old composer was in the middle of a meeting with her colleagues from Bang on a Can, the new music collective she co-founded in the late 1980s, and anyway she didn't recognize the number. Moments later, the phone rang again; this time, it was Bang on a Can's director on the line. Wolfe picked up.

"And he said, 'Do you know what's going on out there? You just won the Pulitzer!'" Wolfe explains. "The whole office was screaming. It was a very, very sweet moment. We all put so much energy into making that piece happen."

Listen here

Pulitzer Prize-winning Anthracite Fields out today on Apple Music

Friday, September 18, 2015
Anthracite Fields

Julia Wolfe's Pulitzer Prize-winning Anthracite Fields: out today on Apple Music.

Julia Wolfe's Pulitzer Prize-winning oratorio for chorus and instruments, Anthracite Fields, is now streaming exclusively on Apple Music for one week. The pre-release album is also available exclusively on iTunes. Cantaloupe Music will release the CD package worldwide on September 25.

Wolfe wrote the piece after doing extensive research about the coal-mining industry in an area very near where she grew up in Pennsylvania. Her text draws on oral histories, interviews with miners and their families, speeches, geographic descriptions, children's rhymes and coal advertisements. The recording features the Bang on a Can All-Stars and The Choir of Trinity Wall Street, under the direction of Julian Wachner.

Hear Anthracite Fields on Apple Music and iTunes now.

Julia Wolfe: Anthracite Fields (Bang on a Can All-Stars & The Choir of Trinity Wall Street)

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