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Eighth Blackbird premieres ‘composition as explanation’

February 25-26, Eighth Blackbird premieres David Lang’s composition as explanation at Duke Performances.  The new work is a nod to Gertrude Stein’s candid and circular 1926 lecture. Lang integrates composition and innovative aspects of theater, performance, and choreography. To create actors out of Eighth Blackbird, Lang sought out director Anne Bogart, co-artistic director of SITI Company. With Bogart at the helm, Lang envisions a new kind of musical artist, one with the formal training of actors on stage…

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Tallis Scholars premiere ‘sun-centered’

Tallis Scholars

In April and May, The Tallis Scholars premiered sun-centered, a work commissioned to share a program with Antoine Brumel’s monumental Missa “Et ecce terræ motus” — a Renaissance mass for 12 voices that gets its name from a scrap of chant whose text means ‘and the earth moved.’

Lang describes the connection:

This scrap of text immediately reminded me of Galileo’s trial for the blasphemy of proving the Earth revolves around the Sun, which seemed to contradict the Bible…

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New Music at Carnegie Hall

October 25, 2008
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I wanted to tell a story. A particular story—in fact, the story of The Little Match Girl, by the Danish author Hans Christian Andersen. The original is ostensibly for children, and it has that shocking combination of danger and morality that many famous children’s stories do. A poor young girl, whose father beats her, tries unsuccessfully to sell matches on the street, is ignored, and freezes to death. Through it all she somehow retains her Christian purity of spirit, but it is not a pretty story…

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Piano Competition Concert

On May 6 at (le) Poisson Rouge, pianists Andrew Zolinsky and Peter Poston, winner of the David Lang 2011 Piano Competition, will perform selections from David Lang’s new CD of solo piano works, this was written by hand. Click here to watch Lang discuss his new CD.