News

As part of the 2013/2014 Debs Chair composer-in-residence at Carnegie Hall, David Lang has curated an amazing series of concerts to focus on the art of storytelling in music. From April 22-29, Carnegie Hall presents: Collected Stories

Lang comments on the mini-festival:

Music and storytelling began their lives together—music to accompany heroic tales, music to worship by, music to suggest the emotions running deep below the surface of a text. Not all music tells a story—how could it? It is the most abstract of all the arts. And yet we often listen to music as if it has a tale to tell, teasing a narrative out of all the tunes and harmonies and changes.

My series—collected stories—divides up the narrative world into topics so we can see how the music changes from subject to subject. Music from different cultures, times, environments, and sound worlds, plus some really exciting commissions, are placed next to each other, highlighting their narrative similarities and telling a larger kind of story about how we listen, experience sound and time, and use music to make sense of the world around us.