News

David Lang & Bill Morrison present  The Village Detective: a song cycle

April 23, 2021

Recorded by Frode Andersen (accordion)
featuring Shara Nova (guest vocals on “I cross the field”)

The film premieres April 27 at the Moscow International Film Festival.

Soundtrack now streaming on all digital services

Conceived as a suite for a single accordion, David Lang’s soundtrack for the forthcoming Bill Morrison film (slated for theatrical release later this year via Kino Lorber) evokes a remarkable turn into folk traditions inspired by Russian storytelling…

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European Premiere: ‘prisoner of the state’

January 12, 2020

After its acclaimed world premiere in June 2019 with the New York Philharmonic, David Lang’s fully-staged opera, prisoner of the state, directed by Elkhanah Pulitzer, begins a European premiere tour 11 January at the Barbican Centre in London with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, BBC Singers and conductor Ilan Volkov.

prisoner of the state was co-commissioned by the New York Philharmonic, Rotterdam’s De Doelen, London’s Barbican Centre, Barcelona’s l’Auditori, Germany’s Bochum Symphony Orchestra, Belgium’s Concertgebouw Bruges and Sweden’s Malmö Opera…

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‘the little match girl passion’: Best of 21st Century

October 11, 2019

The Guardian UK has listed David Lang’s the little match girl passion as one of the top 25 works of classical music written in the 21st Century. The composition received a Pulitzer Prize, the recording won a Grammy Award, and the score has since become one of the most performed new works in the world.

the little match girl passion has been staged by Glimmerglass Opera and Portland Opera, choreographed by the Paris Opera Ballet and the Royal Swedish Ballet, with theatrical productions in Moscow, London, Edinburgh, and Sydney…

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‘true pearl’ premieres at Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum

August 29, 2018

David Lang’s true pearl: an opera in five tapestries (with libretto by Sybil Kempson), is inspired by Isabella Stewart Gardner’s sixteenth-century tapestries that tell the story of the first king of Persia, Cyrus the Great. The five-part “in-ear opera” is a private experience, available only through headphones in the Museum’s Tapestry Room. The “stage set” for each scene is an individual tapestry from the Cyrus series, and listeners are immediately immersed into tales of empire building and passion…

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world premiere: prisoner of the state

March 6, 2018

This season, the New York Philharmonic concludes their three-week-long Music of Conscience initiative, as well as their subscription season, with the world premiere of David Lang’s opera prisoner of the state on June 6–8, 2019, conducted by their new Music Director Jaap van Zweden. Co-commissioned by the New York Philharmonic, Rotterdam’s de Doelen Concert Hall, London’s Barbican Centre, Barcelona’s l’Auditori, Bochum Symphony Orchestra, and Bruges’s Concertgebouw, prisoner of the state is the story of a woman who disguises herself as a prison guard to rescue her husband from unjust political imprisonment…

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symphony without a hero: Feb 8 & 10, Seattle Symph

January 12, 2018

I became a composer because, when I was nine years old, I saw a movie of Leonard Bernstein conducting Shostakovich’s First Symphony with the New York Philharmonic. I fell in love immediately with the music of Shostakovich, with the idea of being a composer, with the orchestra itself. I was so in love with Shostakovich, in fact, that I immersed myself in his music, and then all Russian music, then I studied the Russian language in school, I read all the Russian literature I could find, and I spent the summer of 1975 studying in the Soviet Union…

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