Tours

PROGRAM:

Ludwig van Beethoven: Overture from Prometheus
Lera Auerbach: Arctica
John Luther Adams: The Light that Fills the World
Claude Debussy: La mer

Joshua Weilerstein, conductor
Lera Auerbach, piano
Oslo Philharmonic Choir
Øystein Fevang choir conductor

Julia Wolfe Believing
Kate Moore Ridgeway
Philip Glass Closing
Steve Martland Horses of Instruction
Steve Reich 2×5

Robert Black bass
Vicky Chow piano
David Cossin percussion
Mark Stewart guitar
Ken Thomson clarinet
Arlen Hlusko cello
with Musicians from the RNCM

Formed in 1992, the Bang on a Can All-Stars are recognised worldwide for their ultra-dynamic live performances and recordings of today’s most innovative music. Freely crossing the boundaries between classical, jazz, rock, world and experimental music, this six-member amplified ensemble has consistently forged a distinct category-defying identity, taking music into uncharted territories. Performing each year across the globe, the All-Stars have shattered the definition of what concert music is today.

RNCM students join BOAC for an all live (so 10 musicians) version of Steve Reich’s unapologetic and startling piece, originally written for Kraftwerk’s opening night appearance at Manchester International Festival 2009, at the Velodrome. The Guardian described that gig as ‘a sly and subversive – but best of all, fun – celebration of modernism and modernity. Truly wonderful…’ 

Bearthoven returns to Bowling Green State University’s ‘Music at the Forefront’ Series to perform a new work by Michael Gordon. a blistering new amplified work by Bang on a Can co-founder Michael Gordon alongside Sarah Hennies’s subdued, otherworldly Spectral Malsconcities, which was composed for Bearthoven in 2018.

Program:
Michael Gordon - Mixed Tulips (2020)
Sarah Hennies - Spectral Malsconcities (2018)

Free Admission

Bearthoven - Karl Larson (piano), Pat Swoboda (bass), Matt Evans (percussion)

Described by the New Yorker as one of the ‘vital institutions’ of the NYC contemporary music scene, Bearthoven will present two of their most substantial commissions to date in their Chicago debut at Constellation on February 20. The piano / bass / percussion trio’s program features Mixed Tulips, a blistering new amplified work by Bang on a Can co-founder Michael Gordon, alongside Sarah Hennies’s subdued, otherworldly Spectral Malsconcities, which was composed for Bearthoven in 2018.

“One of New York’s Vital Institutions” - New Yorker (Steve Smith)

“Telepathic, out-of-this-world” - The Observer (Brad Cohen)

“Bearthoven is not just a piano, a bass and some drums — it seems greater than the sum of its parts; a kind of chameleon that is both the subject and the object of the creative process, a synergistic unit that informs and becomes the art that is created at its behest.”- ICAREIFYOULISTEN (Cristian Kriegeskotte)

COMPOSER PORTRAIT: OSCAR BETTISON

Pale Icons of Night (2018) New York premiere

Livre des Sauvages (2012)

Alarm Will Sound returns to Miller Theatre at Columbia University with the music of Oscar Bettison featuring the NY premiere of Pale Icons of Night, a violin concerto written for AWS violinist Courtney Orlando. Oscar Bettison has an affinity for inventing instruments from found material and for reimagining the roles of existing instruments, and his music explores the boundaries of pitch and noise, classical and rock, convention and invention. Bettison’s work has been described as possessing “an unconventional lyricism and a menacing beauty” (WNYC).

Bearthoven returns to the Short North Stage for the world premiere performance of a new work by Michael Gordon. This commission was generously funded by the Johnstone Foundation for New Music.

LOVE ALWAYS

Alarm Will Sound’s St. Louis season ends on May 15th at the Sheldon Concert Hall with a world premiere of music co-created by Allison Loggins-Hull and Toshi Reagon, recipients of support from the Matt Marks Impact Fund. About the new work, Love Always, Loggins-Hull says, “When my son was 4, he had a teacher who brought up Michael Brown’s story during class and throughout the day my son exclaimed that he was afraid of the police. It taught me that despite my son’s very young age and innocence, we were going to have to have these conversations with him sooner than we had hoped.” Ms. Loggins-Hull discovered she could communicate more clearly with her son through letters, following in the tradition of other African-Americans who have done the same. These texts will serve as the foundation for Love Always.

Man as a dreamer would rather withdraw into his own visions, far from the hectic reality. In this dream program, pearls from French choral music will be featured alongside still works by David Lang. The music of David Lang (winner of the Pulitzer Prize 2008) finds an increasingly large audience. It is not without reason that our program Again and Again with music by Lang in 2018 was well appreciated. Gabriel Fauré and Camille Saint-Saëns are among the most loved French composers of all time and take you to another world in these dreamy works. The Psalm symphonyfinally, perhaps the most magical sound of the widely admired psalm 150 by one of the most visionary dreamers in 20th-century music history: Igor Stravinsky. Due to its composition, this program is a fantastic introduction for new listeners to choral music.

So Percussion and Caroline Shaw perform two new projects together: the song cycle "Narrow Sea," and a selection of new collaborative songs.

A New Sounds co-presentation hosted by John Schaefer
Featuring world premieres by Amanda Berlind, Alvin Curran, Hildur Guðnadóttir and Qasim Naqvi, plus New York composer Phil Kline's Exquisite Corpses and Julius Eastman's super-groove Stay on It.  

Bang on a Can’s People’s Commissioning Fund is a radical partnership between artists and audiences to commission works from adventurous composers. Founded in 1997, long before crowd-funding became the norm through Kickstarter and the like, Bang on a Can’s PCF has pooled contributions of all sizes from hundreds of friends and fans and since its inception has commissioned over 50 works of music for New York’s electric Bang on a Can All-Stars.

Over the course of a decade, Michael Gordon has collaborated with the world-renowned Kronos Quartet on a series of provocative works that have sought to stretch, bend and otherwise reshape the boundaries of modern classical music. Clouded Yellow assembles these works for the first time, perfectly encapsulating the breadth and complexity of this long-standing creative partnership.

The Los Angeles Philharmonic and New York’s electric Bang on a Can All-Stars join forces for Julia Wolfe’s new Flower Power, in which she addresses the radical societal upheaval of the 1960s, presented with suitably psychedelic visuals. John Adams also leads the Grammy®-nominated symphonic work he composed for the LA Phil in 1998, when Esa-Pekka led the premiere.

Gordon’s monolithic work Rushes is an hour-long wall of sound made up of pulsating, hypnotic, and slowly shifting patterns, performed by an instrumental ensemble of seven bassoons.

The audience is flanked on each side by the musicians of the LCO, with their focus directed to reactive visuals that examine the limits of perception and the way the mind receives and perceives sensory information.

Follow one woman’s personal struggle against political oppression in this dark, seething and engrossing new minimalist opera from the co-founder of pioneering new music collective Bang on a Can.

215 years after the first performance of Beethoven’s Fidelio, David Lang’s fresh view of the opera’s story – and reflection on its enduring power – receives its European premiere. Beethoven loved the idea of freedom, but Lang's prisoner of the state re-examines Fidelio and discovers that in the 21st century, the issues that it raises about gender and personal identity are more than a match for the ideals of the enlightenment.

Lang’s ability to glimpse the emotional heart and soul of a story within his focused, distilled and highly absorbing music has won him a Pulitzer Prize. In this opera designed for performance with an orchestra on stage, both instrumentalists and audience bear witness to the story of a woman striving to rescue her partner from unjust imprisonment. 

Theatre of Voices will sing the UK premiere of Michael Gordon’s A Western, inspired by the 1952 film High Noon (starring Gary Cooper and Grace Kelly). The cowboy and his gun are treated as emblems of American mythology. Though the sheriff believes in doing his duty to protect his town from outlaws, he is about to marry an ardent pacifist.

Michael Gordon’s music draws upon the story to evoke the atmosphere of 1950’s USA culture into which he was born and grew up. There is even a TV-style commercial in the middle. Gradually, the film refuses (or defuses) the attraction of macho gunmen, while presenting the child’s dream of being a cowboy hero with affection. Gordon’s A Western is a subtle critique of the consumerist imperative, which inevitably leads to the destruction of nature.

Wolfe's Forbidden Love is the newest work on a program that articulates the influence of percussion on the language and execution of new music from the 20th century into the 21st. Whether you know and love this repertoire, or you are listening with totally fresh ears, this program, in this gorgeous venue, is going to be something special.

Program:

VARÈSE Ionisation

CHÁVEZ Largo from Toccata for Percussion Instruments

BEYER March for 30 Percussion Instruments

CAGE Third Construction

STEVE REICH Music for Pieces of Wood

XENAKIS "Peaux" from Pléïades

DAVID LANG Part 3 from the so-called laws of nature

DAN TRUEMAN 120bpm

JULIA WOLFE Forbidden Love (NY Premiere, co-commissioned by Carnegie Hall)

The voice, the original human instrument, is an eloquent language of the heart that delineates energy for which we don’t have words. This workshop offers a place where voice, movement, and image intersect to create an opportunity for participants to discover their own personal richness. A basic instruction in meditation is to follow the breath. We will explore how the outbreath expands into sound, tone, and resonance and work with exercises to deepen our listening and awareness of the inspiration of our environment and voices coming through us. 

The playful aspect of creation and the joy of discovering our unique vocal qualities will be emphasized as a way of connecting us to the healing power of the voice. During the workshop, Meredith will also give a talk on the relationship she has crafted between her Buddhist practice and her art. 

Ballet by Xin Peng Wang after Dante Alighieri
Music by John Luther Adams and Kate Moore

A man, confused by the circumstances of his time and embittered by his life, gets lost in a seemingly hopeless forest. He believes he has come to an end when a mysterious stranger invites him on a fantastic journey. It leads into the fiery chasms of hell and over the steep heights of the Purification Mountain finally into paradise.

Xin Peng Wang’s dance-like Sphere Show spans three seasons. 2021 – in the 700th year of Dante’s death – all three parts will be united in a single evening in the Ruhr metropolis.

With Purgatorio now the ascent to the dizzying heights of the Refining Mountain is imminent. Many dangers lurk, some hard testing must be passed before we are allowed to pass through the huge flame wall of purgatory. Will we have the strength?

Show Dates:

November 2, 2019
November 15, 2019
November 17, 2019
November 28, 2019
December 13, 2019
January 11, 2020
January 25, 2020
January 31, 2020
February 15, 2020

Meredith Monk presents her concert version of Cellular Songs at Hartford School of Music.

The voice, the original human instrument, expresses an eloquent language of the heart that delineates energy for which we don’t have words.

With careful instruction and supportive guidance from Meredith Monk—celebrated internationally for the last 50 years and hailed as “a magician of the voice”—together with Ellen Fisher an interdisciplinary artist, you will tap into landscapes of sound. Together, in this workshop you will unearth feelings, energies, and memories that could not otherwise be expressed.

This is a rare opportunity to uncover your unique voice with methods developed by a pioneering composer who is also a longtime Buddhist practitioner.

THE DAY is a new music/dance work by cellist Maya Beiser, dancer Wendy Whelan, choreographer Lucinda Childs, with music by David Lang. A collaboration among legends, THE DAY is an evening-long sensory exploration of two journeys—life and the eternal, post-mortal voyage of the soul. This bold, highly collaborative work explores universal themes through the shared language of music and dance.

DEEP MINIMALISM 2.0 Sunday
Part of Classical Season 2019/20
The second day of a weekend dedicated to meditative listening and deep concentration.

What can you expect from this weekend?

The soft strains of Malibu’s spoken voice with swells of 16 live cellos and cut-up sound Foley. The entombing chorales of Nivhek, featuring shimmering vibraphone.

The slowly layering canons of John Luther Adams’ Canticles of the Sky, 16 individual cello lines evoking the movement of sun and moon in a fantasy sky.

The dark underworld chromaticism of Morton Feldman’s Triadic Memories, where the flow of piano tones become an unspoken mantra to infinity.

Laura Cannell’s long-drawn studies of medieval folk fiddle and double pipe music, riffing on melodies which feel both close at hand and buried by stages of modernity.

BalletCollective returns to NYC with two world premieres and repertory featuring an inspiring roster of artistic contributors: artists Zaria Forman and Trevor Paglen, photojournalist George Steinmetz, science fiction writer Ken Liu, composers Judd Greenstein, Paul Moravec, Julianna Barwick, and Caleb Burhans, choreographers Troy Schumacher, Julianna Barwick, and Preston Chamblee, an ensemble of dancers from New York City Ballet, and orchestral collective The Knights. Evening shows on Wednesday, October 23; Friday, October 25; and Saturday, October 26. Matinee on Saturday, October 26.

If The New York Times calls you “the nation’s most important quartet,” then you must be doing something right… in the case of the JACK Quartet, they’ve established themselves as one of the leaders in new music, giving voice to countless composers, while creating a new body of works that prove classical music has a future far beyond powdered wigs and dusty scores.

For their Crypt Sessions debut, the JACK will give the New York premiere of Lines Made by Walking, a piece by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer John Luther Adams that channels nature in all of its magnificence and fragility.