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…

David Lang’s music is featured in the upcoming film, Youth, by Italian director Paolo Sorrentino — 2014 Oscar-winner for best foreign film (The Great Beauty). David scored the new film (about a contemporary composer), and one of his recent pieces ‘just (after song of songs)’ is the music for the official trailer! It was commissioned, premiered and released by the Louth Contemporary Music Society and is performed by vocalists Trio Mediaeval and Garth Knox’s Salterro Trio…

Francine Prose9/13/2016 The Loser, David Lang’s beautiful and startlingly original opera, had its world premiere this month at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Composed for a solo baritone, a chamber ensemble, and a concert pianist, the opera (Lang not only wrote the music but is also responsible for the libretto and the stage direction) has been adapted from the Thomas Bernhard novel of the same name—a book which, since its publication in 1983, has attracted an almost cultish following…

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