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First Person: Pulitzer Prize winning composer David Lang on the original Jewish love story

I wouldn’t say that I am super religious, but I am definitely religion-curious. It is a big part of my family background, and, to be honest, a big part of the history of my chosen field, Western classical music. For the past 1000 years, the church has been the most powerful commissioner of Western music, and its most active employer of musicians.
Because of this, much of our foundational repertoire is explicitly on the subject of how music helps a listener get in the mood for a religious experience…
continue readingDavid Lang Profile in New York Times
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…
continue readingNY 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…
continue readingOral History, American Music: David Lang
Oral History of American Music (OHAM) is the only ongoing project in the field of music dedicated to the collection and preservation of oral and video memoirs in the voices of the creative musicians of our century.
Read more…How David Lang redefined opera

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…
continue readingDavid Lang, ‘again (after ecclesiastes)’ featured on NPR

David Lang, ‘again (after ecclesiastes)’
June 14, 2022 10:35 AM ET
Tom Huizenga
David Lang‘s again (after ecclesiastes) opens with sections of the Cappella Amsterdam choir, from high to low, interlacing on the phrase “People come and people go / The earth goes on and on.” The words are from Ecclesiastes, a curious book of The Old Testament that reads more like a philosophical argument than a rousing validation of belief…
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