Tours

For our project “Bang on a Can @ Villa Musica”, the All-Stars will be cooperating with the StiftungVilla Musica, which is dedicated to promoting young talent especially in the area of chamber music.

As part of a one-week festival, we will gather, rehearse and perform together with a group of young musicians from Germany. All of the musicians will appear in twelve concerts in various arrangements at the Frankfurter Hof in Mainz (Nov 19 and 26) and the Baroque Castle Engers in Neuwied (Nov 20-25). The festival also includes two commissioned works and will conclude with a several-hour-long concert marathon.

Nov 20 at Frankfurter Hof
Bang on a Can All-Stars program:
Steve Reich: Electric Counterpoint
David Lang: sunray
Julia Wolfe: Believing
Michael Gordon: For Madeleine
Louis Andriessen: Workers Union
Philip Glass: Closing

Nov 21-25 at Castle Engers
daily performances by residency fellows and the All-Stars. Repertoire TBA

Nov 26  at Frankfurter Hof 
Residency finale Marathon concert! Performance will include two world premieres by composersAnna Thorvaldsdottir and Felipe Waller.

Dublin Guitar Quartet performs Michael Gordon's "Amplified" [UK premiere] 

The Dublin Guitar Quartet goes electric for the third instalment of Bang on a Can founding composer Michael Gordon’s series exploring the untapped possibilities of select instruments. 

MUSICA NOVA

Brad Lubman, Conductor

Program:

Oliver Knussen – Ophelia Dances

Georges Aperghis – Seesaw Philippe Hurel - ...à mesure

Michael Gordon – Dry

FREE

'Balancing on the Edge’ is a collaborative production between Thin Edge New Music Collective and A Girl in the Sky Productions presented in association with Harbourfront Centre, which will explore via a deeply integrated relationship between contemporary music and contemporary circus arts, the myriad of ways in which modern humanity is precariously balanced on the edge of survival and evolution. New circus and new music collide in boundary pushing, radical circus performances featuring special guest, DJ P-Love and a cast of 40 local artists.

Program:

Magma (2016)
Circus Artists: Diana Lopez, Rebecca Carney
Music: Nicole Lizée (b.1973) Phonographenlieder (2014)
String quartet, piano, percussion, mezzo soprano, turntablist

Naked to the Sky (2016)
Circus Artist: Louis Barbier
Choreographer: Emmanuel Cyr
Music: Scott Rubin (b.1989) Naked to the Sky (2016)
Piano, percussion, saxophone, violin, electronics

Underneath (2016)
Circus Artist: Emily Hughes
Projections by Evan DeRushie
Music: Iannis Xenakis (1922-2001) Okho (1989)
Percussion trio

-Intermission-

Ascension (2016)
Circus Artist: Holly Treddenick, Angola Murdoch
Music John Cage (1912-1992) Aria & Fontana Mix (1958/1959)
Soprano, tape
Dramaturgy: Sarah Porter

Excavating Meaning (2016)
Circus artist: Brandy Leary
Music: Nick Storring (b.1981) Amanhã (2016)
Piano, percussion, saxophone, cello, 2 violins

Ghost Bicycle (2016)
Circus Artists: Rebecca Leonard, Natasha Danchenko
Dramaturgy: Sonia Norris
Video: Jason J Brown
Music: David Lang (b.1957) Cheating, Lying, Stealing (1993)
Bass clarinet, cello, piano, percussion + 2 antiphonal brake drums

Composer Martin Bresnick celebrates his 70th birthday in a concert presenting selected works from the last four decades – performed by some of the greatest musicians of our time. Don’t miss this unique event.

Program:

Tent of Miracles (1984) Taimur Sullivan, baritone saxophone and 4 channel playback

Bird as Prophet (1999) Elly Toyoda violin & Lisa Moore, piano

Joaquin is Dreaming (2008) Benjamin Verdery, guitar

Prayers Remain Forever (2012) TwoSense: Ashley Bathgate cello & Lisa Moore piano

Prophetic Strain (2009) Margaret Lancaster flute & Lisa Moore

Ishi’s Song (2012) Lisa Moore

Songs of the Mouse People (1999) New Morse Code: Hannah Collins cello & Mike Compitello vibraphone

Every Thing Must Go (2007) Red Clay Saxophone Quartet

PROGRAM:

Schubert - Quartettsatz in C Minor, D. 703
Julia Wolfe - Splendid Hopes (World Premiere)
Schubert - String Quintet in C Major, D. 956

Julia Wolfe’s cello quintet, Splendid Hopes, was commissioned for Johannes Moser & the Pacifica Quartet by Duke Performances at Duke University, the Schubert Club, Portland Friends of Chamber Music & by Elizabeth and Justus Schlichting for the Segerstrom Center for the Arts.

Ballet by Xin Peng Wang 
Music by Hans Abrahamsen, Louis Andriessen, Luciano Berio, Michael Gordon, David Lang and Peteris Vasks

Volti’s first concert of the season, A Close Correspondence, will be shared with the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble. It’s a natural alliance: Volti joins forces with this group of instrumentalists, renowned for finding provocative and beguiling ways of pairing standard repertoire with new music, for a concert about correspondence.  Left Coast will playLeoš Janáček’s “Intimate Letters” string quartet and Volti will sing “A Father’s Love,” the movement from David Lang’s “battle hymns” based on a beautiful goodbye letter from civil war soldier Sullivan Ballou. Together our ensembles present world premieres for string quartet + chamber chorus from Onur Türkmen  (text from a letter of Goethe) and Mark Winges (text from letters of Abelard and Héloïse, Janáček, and Virginia Woolf.)

A letter is meant to be read, connecting the reader with writer. These works, inspired by the dying art of letter writing, are meant to be heard.

From March to May 2015 John Zorn wrote 300 new compositions collected in a book of music called The Bagatelles. This super special marathon concert presents 20 different ensembles performing over 100 different pieces from Zorn’s expansive new book of music in an unprecedented 10 hour concert experience. The groups include many members of Zorn’s inner circle as well as exciting young players from the worlds of rock, jazz and classical music, many of whom are performing Zorn compositions for the first time. 10 hours of non stop creativity by some of the greatest and most creative musicians working today!

Featuring Craig Taborn, John Medeski, Kenny Wollesen, Matt Mitchell, Ikue Mori, Jim Black, Sylvie Courvoisier, Mark Feldman, Erik Friedlander, Mary Halvorson, Kris Davis, Jamie Saft, Julian Lage, Gyan Riley, Brian Marsella, Marty Ehrlich, Jon Irabagon, Harris Eisenstadt, Matt Hollenberg and many many more!

Volti’s first concert of the season, A Close Correspondence, will be shared with the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble. It’s a natural alliance: Volti joins forces with this group of instrumentalists, renowned for finding provocative and beguiling ways of pairing standard repertoire with new music, for a concert about correspondence.  Left Coast will playLeoš Janáček’s “Intimate Letters” string quartet and Volti will sing “A Father’s Love,” the movement from David Lang’s “battle hymns” based on a beautiful goodbye letter from civil war soldier Sullivan Ballou. Together our ensembles present world premieres for string quartet + chamber chorus fromOnur Türkmen  (text from a letter of Goethe) and Mark Winges (text from letters of Abelard and Héloïse, Janáček, and Virginia Woolf.)

A letter is meant to be read, connecting the reader with writer. These works, inspired by the dying art of letter writing, are meant to be heard.

Charlotte Symphony Chorus performs David Lang's 'the little match girl passion'

Program:

J.S. Bach - Cantate 51

Georg Friedrich Haendel - Dixit Dominus

David Lang - statement to the court

Yale Choral Artists

Jeffrey Douma, conductor

Lash: Requiem (world premiere)
Lang: statement to the court
Hearne: Consent
With members of the Yale Philharmonia

Free Admission

New Music Detroit's annual marathon, 'Strange Beautiful Music IX'  will takes place on Saturday September 17, 2016.

More info coming soon.

Amsterdam Sinfonietta and Slagwerk Den Haag Perform:

Shalygin - Lullaby for string orchestra

Morales - Music for Bones

Widmann - Aria (Dutch premiere)

Moore - Fern, for five drummers, five strings and electronics 

Van der Aa - Up-close, for cello, string orchestra, electronics and video

The pieces on Bonjour's eponymous debut album are musical snapshots. Performed in no particular order, each one represents a day of the week and its associated mood, and some, like "Friday 3 PM," are more specific than others. Ghys draws on the Indian classical tradition of raga, the Western classical tradition, jazz and other popular music to craft his own idiosyncratic style that by turns builds like the best kind of post-rock anthem, grooves like a hocket-obsessed West African funk band, and has the harmonic vocabulary of a synthesizing sponge with a diplomatic passport. The players’ voices are alternately treated as additional melodic instruments or as dictaphones spewing nonsensical parallel quotes from a variety of literary, news, and other sources, as in "Monday Morning." The combination of vocals with guitars (electric and acoustic) and percussion, which includes everything from drum kit to melodica and glockenspiel, all of it fleshed out by several lush and pliable layers of lower strings, yields a surprising array of textures in which to become lost and then find one’s way out of, or to just relish staying lost in for a while. 

More than 60 percussionists will come together to perform John Luther Adams’s “Inuksuit,” an epic outdoor piece that has helped to redefine what live musical experience can be in the 21st-century. Rite of Summer will be presenting two afternoon performances of “Inuksuit,” a work the New York Times has called “the ultimate environmental piece.”

1pm and 3pm

FREE

Lauded for her “unbridled passion” by The Wall Street Journal, cellist Maya Beiser performs a new multi-media work by composer and Pultizer Prize winner David Lang, combining Beiser’s cello and spoken word with live video projections from artist Irit Batsry.

FREE EVENT

Is there anything more celebratory than singing together? This year, experience the world premiere of Pulitzer Prize winner David Lang’s the public domain featuring a 1,000-voice volunteer choir. Led by renowned choral conductor Simon Halsey and presented outdoors on Lincoln Center’s iconic campus, the piece honors the shared knowledge that connects us all. It will be both an artistic revelation and an unforgettable community event.

A program of crosscurrents with music by Americans living in Italy, and Italians whose music has permeated U.S. culture. From David Lang to Ennio Morricone, discover how Italian and American music have traveled together through film–all the way back to Puccini's La fanciulla del West.

Program: 

Ennio Morricone - Final Duel, from The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, From Il mercenario 

David Lang - ark luggage, Simple Song #3  

Yotam Haber - New Ghetto Music

Andrew Norman - Music in Circles

Clara Iannotta - D'après

Lisa Moore presents a solo pianoforte (softloud) program of works spanning 200 years. Music by JS Bach, Martin Bresnick, Claude Debussy, Philip Glass, Paul Grabowski, Leos Janacek, Kate Moore and Frederic Rzewski.

Program: “Benjamin Northey conducts Sibelius”

Lachlan Skipworth - New work*
Shostakovich - Piano Concerto No. 2, F major, Op.102
Sibelius - Symphony No. 6, D minor, Op.104

*Monash University Ed Byrne Commission

Benjamin Northey conductor
Lisa Moore piano

With its innovative multi-genre original productions, sensational interpretations of modern classics, and “exhilarating blend of precision and anarchy, rigor and bedlam,” (The New Yorker), Sō Percussion has redefined the scope of the modern percussion ensemble. Sō Percussion creates and presents new collaborative works to adventurous and curious audiences — come be curious!

The earliest piece planned for Sō Percussion’s trilogy of concerts, John Cage’s Third Construction from 1942, represents a landmark in composing for percussion. Here, instruments from around the world—including rattles, drums, tin cans, claves, cowbells, lion’s roar, cymbal, ratchet, teponaxtle, quijades, cricket caller, and conch shell—are arranged and re-arranged into various combinations to create an astonishing array of colors and rhythms. The second piece, Paul Lansky’s Threads, is one of the most popular works ever written for percussion ensemble. Structured like a Baroque cantata, it swings between moments of intense delicacy and ecstatic drumming. Finally, the four mini-concertos of Steve Mackey’s It Is Time marshal the virtuosity of the individual members of Sō Percussion to speed up, slow down, warp, celebrate, and mourn our perceptions of time.