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‘man made’ world premiere

[video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPIrFPbAUz4 width:300 height:300]

As part of Nico Muhly’s A Scream and an Outrage festival, The Barbican Centre features two premieres by David Lang.

On May 10, So Percussion and the BBC Symphony Orchestra, with conductor Jayce Ogren, give the world premiere of Lang’s concerto for percussion quartet and orchestra, man made. Lang combines found percussion (sticks, pipes, metal trash) with orchestral instruments in a unique and incredibly compelling work commissioned by the Barbican Centre and the Los Angeles Philharmonic…

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Summer Opera: Glimmerglass, Mostly Mozart

From July 20 through August 22, 2013 Glimmerglass Opera in Cooperstown, NY stages 2 works by David Lang, directed by Francesca Zambello. His Pulitzer Prize-winning choral work, the little match girl passion and a new work, when we were children, commissioned specifically for this performance by Glimmerglass Opera.

August 10 – 13 Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival and the International Contemporary Ensemble (Tony Arnold, soprano) present the New York premiere of David Lang’s the whisper opera for soprano and four instrumentalists, directed by Jim Findlay…

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NY Times: David Lang’s ‘whisper opera’ Mines Truths From the Web

Secrets Found Online, Shared Softly
David Lang’s ‘whisper opera’ Mines Truths From the Web
By WILLIAM ROBIN, August 2, 2013
Opera and technology have long had an uneasy relationship. The one has always required the other — from the Baroque spectacle of 17th-century operas, with their deus-ex-machina gimmickry, to the stagecraft required to mount any contemporary production of Wagner’s “Ring” cycle.

Historically, though, opera tended to avoid confronting the technological head-on…

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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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Collected Stories at Carnegie Hall 4/22-29

As part of the 2013/2014 Debs Chair composer-in-residence at Carnegie Hall, David Lang has curated an amazing series of concerts to focus on the art of storytelling in music. From April 22-29, Carnegie Hall presents: Collected Stories

Lang comments on the mini-festival:

Music and storytelling began their lives together—music to accompany heroic tales, music to worship by, music to suggest the emotions running deep below the surface of a text…

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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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