works

Road Trip (2017) 60'

music by Michael Gordon, David Lang, and Julia Wolfe

cl, pno, perc, egtr, vc, db

Road Trip was commissioned by BAM for the 2017 Next Wave Festival and by Stephen A. Block, Robert Braun & Joan Friedman, Leslie Lassiter, Raulee Marcus, New Music USA, Maria & Robert A. Skirnick, Jane and Richard Stewart, with additional support from Jerry Eberhardt and Phil Hettema.

Program Note Video rent music More Info

works

the loser (2016) 60'

solo baritone, solo piano; perc, va, vc, db

The Brooklyn Academy of Music, 2016 Next Wave Festival

Program Note Libretto Video Recordings score preview More Info

works

love fail (2012) 60'

Text by David Lang (after Lydia Davis, Marie de France, Gottfried von Strassburg, Béroul, Thomas of Britain and Richard Wagner)

SSAA playing simple percussion instruments

love fail was co-commissioned by The Brooklyn Academy of Music’s 2012 Next Wave Festival, The International Festival of Arts & Ideas, The John F. Kennedy Center Abe Fortas Memorial Fund, The Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA, The Secrest Artists Series at Wake Forest University, and Hancher Performances at the University of Iowa. Movement 4, 'the wood and the vine', was commissioned by The Newman Center for the Performing Arts at University of Denver, The University of California at Riverside, and the Santa Fe Concert Association in Santa FE, NM. Movement 10, 'I live in pain', in a different version, was originally written for “TheCrossing,” Donald Nally, conductor.

Program Note Libretto Video Recordings rent music score preview More Info

works

love fail – arr. female chorus (2012, rev. 2016) 60'

Text by David Lang (after Lydia Davis, Marie de France, Gottfried von Strassburg, Béroul, Thomas of Britain and Richard Wagner)

SSAA chorus (or 8 solo women singers) playing simple percussion instruments

The Brooklyn Academy of Music’s 2012 Next Wave Festival, The International Festival of Arts & Ideas, The John F. Kennedy Center Abe Fortas Memorial Fund, The Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA, The Wake Forest University / Secrest Artists Series, and Hancher Performances at the University of Iowa

Program Note Libretto Recordings rent music score preview More Info

news

‘the loser’ premieres at Brooklyn Academy of Music

the loser September 7-11, 2016. Brooklyn Academy of Music. Gilman Opera House.

He appears to float in the nothingness. Confined to a tall tower 20 feet above the seats, he is alone, broken, and has a story to tell.

In this daringly staged one-act opera from Pulitzer Prize-winning composer David Lang—featuring mezzanine-only seating and based on the novel by Austrian writer Thomas Bernhard—a failed piano student (baritone Rod Gilfry, Anna Nicole, 2013 Next Wave) recounts a life lived in the shadows of his famous friend Glenn Gould…

continue reading
event
works

Shelter (2005) 65'

music by Michael Gordon, David Lang and Julia Wolfe; text by Deborah Artman

3 Sop, fl, ob, cl, bn, hn, tpt, tbn, tba, pno, egtr, eb, perc, 2 vln, vla, vc, cb [all instruments and voices amplified]

The Next Wave Festival of the Brooklyn Academy of Music, musikFabrik and Kunstiftung NRW

Program Note Video Recordings rent music score preview More Info

works
works
news

Setting a Rant to Music: On Adapting Thomas Bernhard’s ‘The Loser’ for the Opera

By David Lang
http://www.themillions.com

September 22, 2016

In 1998, I wrote music for a production of Friedrich Schiller’s play Mary Stuart at the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco. The director was my friend Carey Perloff, the music was sung by the spectacular men’s vocal ensemble Chanticleer, and the translation of the text was by the writer and Village Voice theater critic Michael Feingold. There can be a lot of down time for a composer and a translator during theater rehearsals so Michael and I passed the time telling each other stories about books we should be reading, and Michael suggested I read Thomas Bernhard’s The Loser

continue reading