A moving and inspirational feature about an extraordinary humanitarian project to create a musical and artistic space in a hospital morgue.
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Daniel A. Mahraun
Lang Talks to Paulie
Listen to an interview with Paul Lazar.
David describes the epiphany he had at nine years old that lead to his life as a composer. He and Paul have a fun, freewheeling conversation amidst excerpts of David’s music, with a little Steve Reich thrown in as well.
http://www.bboxradio.com/archive/talk-to-paulie/1202-talk-to-paulie.html
Sounds Heard: the little match girl passion
By Molly Sheridan
Read more…”I wanted to tell a story,” writes David Lang, introducing the new recording (just out on Harmonia Mundi) of his 2008 Pulitzer-Prize winner the little match girl passion. Such a simple and powerful desire; such a simple and powerful story to tell. (…)
Tallis Scholars premiere ‘sun-centered’

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…
continue readingwatch Gustavo Dudamel, So Percussion and the LA Philharmonic rehearse ‘man made’!
I have worked with So Percussion for a very long time now and I know them really well. When I got the opportunity to write a concerto for them I wanted to make it specifically for them, for the things that they have been concentrating on for the past few years. The are frequently theatrical, they invite found objects into their performances, they build their own instruments, etc. I wondered if I could make the unusualness of their musicality the centerpiece of this concerto, but how could an orchestra of ‘normal’ instruments doing mostly ‘normal’ things find common ground with them?…
continue readingNYT Op-Ed Article

I didn’t like it.
School was over and I was sick of it, and I thought it was about time to go to work. I had gone straight from high school to college to graduate school, and I was pretty burned out. I had loved everything I had been doing in school, but as I got further along I became confused.
The paradox of a musical education is that the more sophisticated you become about how it all works, the further away you move from the things normal listeners actually hear…
continue readingBuilding the Waiting Room: An Interview with David Lang
By Galen H. Brown
On November 3rd, I sat down with David Lang at a cafe in Downtown Manhattan. I recorded the interview (on my iPod) intending to transcribe it, but the audio, while still marred by a lot of background noise, is actually listenable. (…)
The Passing Measures
On this edition of New Sounds, composer David Lang presents his CD-length ambient concerto, ”the passing measures.” The new album is a most unusual concerto for bass clarinet, chorus, and orchestra that explores mortality, time, and the function of music. As Lang explains, ”My piece is about the struggle to create beauty. A single very consonant chord falls slowly over the course of forty minutes. That is the piece.”
WaPo Best of 2019: Classical Music
By Anne Midgette
Classical music critic
Dec. 10, 2019
People often ask: Why can’t we update old operas for our time? With “Prisoner of the State,” David Lang has done just that. He remakes Beethoven’s only opera, “Fidelio,” a problem child of the repertory, into a new work that hews to the original in form while underscoring its relevance to today’s society…
continue readingLang “Talks to Paulie”
Listen to an interview with Paul Lazar.
David describes the epiphany he had at nine years old that lead to his life as a composer. He and Paul have a fun, freewheeling conversation amidst excerpts of David’s music, with a little Steve Reich thrown in as well.
http://www.bboxradio.com/archive/talk-to-paulie/1202-talk-to-paulie.html