There is only one thing surprising about Bang On A Can founders Julia Wolfe, David Lang, and Michael Gordon being composers-in-residence at the 2018 Big Ears Festival. The surprise is that it hasn’t happened before now. It is simply impossible to talk about international contemporary music, and those that perform it, without the realization of the organization’s continuing presence and long-term impact on the music scene and its performers. And, organization, in the greatest sense of the word, is the correct term for what Wolfe, Lang, and Gordon have created.
Formed in 1987 around the first Bang on a Can Marathon concert—12 continuous hours of new music—they admit that they had no idea that its innovation would be so attractive that it would force them into a continuing relationship. That first Marathon in the Exit Art Gallery in Soho featured appearances by Steve Reich, John Cage, Pauline Oliveros and Milton Babbitt, along with a host of young composers yet to acquire a reputation but who are now new music household names.
That first marathon led to another and another, the event moving with its expanding reputation to a series of venues over the past 30 years: the R.A.P.P. Arts Center, La Mama, the Kitchen, the Society For Ethical Culture, Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall, PACE University, the Henry Street Settlement, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Symphony Space, to the Winter Garden at Brookfield Place.
Over those 30 years, Bang on a Can—the organization—has expanded to include a house band, Bang on a Can All-Stars; the People’s Commissioning Fund—a “co-op” method of commissioning pieces from new and exciting composers; the Asphalt Orchestra—a new music marching band; a Summer Festival and residency for composers and performers; and a number of other programs like Found Sound Nation.
Now in their 31st year of existence, the Bang on a Can founders are set to lend the products of their longevity and sonic exploration to Big Ears. Gordon, Lang, and Wolfe will be presenting three concerts at the festival:
“Field Recordings”
(Friday, March 23 at 12pm, Bijou Theatre)
The group’s current multi-media project now features more than 30 commissioned works using archival audio, found sound and video. Featuring Bang on a Can All-Stars, this festival set will include works-
Julia Wolfe: “Reeling”
Florent Ghys: “An Open Cage”
Michael Gordon: “Gene Takes a Drink” with film by Bill Morrison
Christian Marclay: “Fade to Slide” with film by Christian Marclay
David Lang: “unused swan”
Todd Reynolds: “Seven Sundays”
Caroline Shaw: “Really Craft When You”
Steve Reich: “The Cave of Machpelah”
Bryce Dessner: “Letter 27” with film
Anna Clyne: “A Wonderful Day”
Nick Zammuto: “Real Beauty Turns” with film by Nick Zammuto
“Anthracite Fields”
(Saturday, March 24 at 3:30pm, The Mill & Mine)
Julia Wolfe’s Pulitzer-Prize winning work capturing the lives of the Pennsylvania coal miners.
“New York’s electric Bang on a Can All-Stars team up with Nashville’s SONOS choir for Bang on a Can co-founder Julia Wolfe’s haunting, poignant and relentlessly physical Anthracite Fields, an examination of the coal-mining industry so musically and socially provocative that it netted the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Music.”
“Bang on a Can – 30 Years” (Sunday, March 25 at 7pm, Tennessee Theatre), a concert featuring core compositions from the three founders:
David Lang: “cheating, lying, stealing”
Julia Wofe: “Big Beautiful Dark and Scary”
Michael Gordon: “Big Space”
Steve Martland: “Horses of Instruction”
Philip Glass: “Closing”
“Expect everything from avant-garde Minimalism to rock and funk in this 30th-birthday concert program, featuring the U.S. premiere of Bang on a Can co-founder and artistic director Michael Gordon’s Big Space by the Bang on a Can All-Stars with members of Knoxville’s Nief Norf arranged in the hall surrounding the audience, plus core works by Bang on a Can co-founders and artistic directors David Lang and Julia Wolfe, and music written for the All-Stars by Steve Martland and Philip Glass.”
Information on 2018 Big Ears Festival
