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love fail premieres at Yale

Lang’s newest work, love fail, premieres June 29 at the New Haven International Festival of Arts and Ideas. Performed by the legendary vocal ensemble Anonymous 4, love fail is an evening-length work that weaves together snippets of medieval courtly love narratives, short stories by MacArthur Fellow Lydia Davis, scraps from the libretto of Wagner’s opera Tristan and Isolde, and text by Lang himself.

Out of these sources, Lang has conjured a single story, in which two unnamed lovers meet each other, love each other, and lose each other—not necessarily in that order…

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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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Lang’s score “gorgeous” in Sorrentino’s film premiered at Cannes 2015.

Cannes Film Review: ‘Youth’

Variety Magazine

http://variety.com/2015/film/festivals/youth-review-cannes-michael-caine-paolo-sorrentino-1201501415/

Jay Weissberg

Cannes, France — In “The Great Beauty,” there’s a flashback in which a young Jep Gambardella recalls the promise of love — its loss, with the betrayal of youthful ideals, leads to Jep’s crushing self-contempt. It’s a tender moment in a film of deep cynicism, and now Paolo Sorrentino, with “Youth,” delivers his most tender film to date, an emotionally rich contemplation of life’s wisdom gained, lost and remembered — with cynicism harping from the sidelines, but as a wearied chord rather than a major motif…

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‘the loser’ premieres at Brooklyn Academy of Music

the loser September 7-11, 2016. Brooklyn Academy of Music. Gilman Opera House.

He appears to float in the nothingness. Confined to a tall tower 20 feet above the seats, he is alone, broken, and has a story to tell.

In this daringly staged one-act opera from Pulitzer Prize-winning composer David Lang—featuring mezzanine-only seating and based on the novel by Austrian writer Thomas Bernhard—a failed piano student (baritone Rod Gilfry, Anna Nicole, 2013 Next Wave) recounts a life lived in the shadows of his famous friend Glenn Gould…

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Setting a Rant to Music: On Adapting Thomas Bernhard’s ‘The Loser’ for the Opera

By David Lang
http://www.themillions.com

September 22, 2016

In 1998, I wrote music for a production of Friedrich Schiller’s play Mary Stuart at the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco. The director was my friend Carey Perloff, the music was sung by the spectacular men’s vocal ensemble Chanticleer, and the translation of the text was by the writer and Village Voice theater critic Michael Feingold. There can be a lot of down time for a composer and a translator during theater rehearsals so Michael and I passed the time telling each other stories about books we should be reading, and Michael suggested I read Thomas Bernhard’s The Loser

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‘anatomy theater’ New York premiere

From January 7-14, the Prototype Festival presents the New York premiere of David Lang’s anatomy theater, co-produced by Beth Morrison Projects, with set design by Mark Dion, direction by Bob McGrath, conductor Christopher Rountree and the International Contemporary Ensemble, plus Bill Morrison (video), Laurie Olinder (projection), Christopher Kuhl (lighting), and Alixandra Gage Englund (costumes).

Based on actual 18th-century texts, anatomy theater follows the astonishing progression of an English murderess: from confession to execution and, ultimately, public dissection before a paying audience of fascinated onlookers…

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

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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