David Lang is one of the most thoughtful composers working today. His music is consistently probing, emotionally urgent, strange, and beautiful. It is also getting simpler as the years roll on—a sign that the mind behind it is undergoing a kind of ritualistic purification. I’ve been obsessed with David’s music since I bought a recording by mail order of his piece cheating lying stealing when I was in high school, and I have written a piano piece called David Lang Needs a Hug…
In 1987, David Lang was a 30-year-old composer and doctoral student who, with his Yale buddies Michael Gordon and Julia Wolfe, founded Bang on a Can, a scruffy organization dedicated to the proposition that all musics are created equal. These days, Lang is an eminence: Pulitzer Prize winner, member of the Yale faculty, and composer in residence at Carnegie Hall for 2013-14. Justin Davidson talked with him midway through “collected stories,” a six-concert festival he curated at Carnegie’s Zankel Hall, and days before the release of his recordinglove/fail…
European premieresprisoner of the state David Lang, libretto/music Elkhanah Pulitzer, director Cast: Claron McFadden — the assistant Davone Tines — the jailer Alan Oke — the governor Michael Wilmering — the prisoner
(in Bochum, Rotterdam, and Bruges)
Jarrett Ott — the prisoner
(in Malmö and Barcelona)
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, conducted by Jaap van Zweden, and received its British premiere in January 2020 at the Barbican Centre in London with BBC Symphony Orchestra, BBC Singers and conductor Ilan Volkov…
DAVID LANG first heard Wagner’s “Tristan und Isolde” at the San Francisco Opera in 1974, as an undergraduate student and aspiring composer. This was the first opera ticket — standing room — that he had paid for with his own money, and he arrived well prepared, with a copy of the score and a flashlight to study it by.
“It was a really big deal for me,” Mr. Lang, now 55, said recently, sitting on a sofa in his light-flooded SoHo loft while two parakeets called noisily for attention from another room…
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…
