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European Premiere: ‘prisoner of the state’

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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prisoner of the state

David Lang, music/libretto
Elkhanah Pulitzer, director


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[REVIEW] click to read NY Times review of 'prisoner of the state'
de Volkskrant

David Lang’s prisoner of the state — co-commissioned by the New York Philharmonic, De Doelen, Barbican Centre, l’Auditori, Bochumer Symphoniker, Concertgebouw Bruges and Malmö Opera — premiered in June 2019 with the New York Philharmonic, and received its British premiere in January 2020 at the Barbican Centre in London with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, BBC Singers and conductor Ilan Volkov…

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news
news

The Season of ‘the little match girl passion’

Since winning the Pulitzer Prize in 2008, David Lang’s the little match girl passionhas quickly joined the repertoire as a chamber work, a staged production, a work for full chorus, and a featured event on Christmas and Easter concerts around the world.

This season over 50 performances of the little match girl passion are being given by ensembles throughout North America, Europe and Australia, including the return of Donald Nally’s The Crossing to New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art

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Biography

“With his winning of the Pulitzer Prize for the little match girl passion (one of the most original and moving scores of recent years), Lang, once a postminimalist enfant terrible, has solidified his standing as an American master.”

— The New Yorker

Passionate, prolific, and complicated, composer David Lang embodies the restless spirit of invention. Lang is at the same time deeply versed in the classical tradition and committed to music that resists categorization, constantly creating new forms…

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writing

Donald Martin Jenni (1937-2006): A Remembrance

July 28, 2006

Two weeks ago I received a sad email, telling me that the composer Donald Martin Jenni had died, from a long and painful cancer. My first thought was that I was sorry I had not kept in closer contact, my second was that I was surprised to read in his obituary that he had ended up in New Orleans, with a new life and an adopted family. His life had changed so much since I had known him. I had been a masters student of Martin's from 1978 to 1980 at the University of Iowa, and although we had stayed in touch after I left Iowa—we would send each other music and he would come visit whenever he was in New York—the second that he retired he vanished…

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