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Daniel A. Mahraun

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

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…

David Lang’s newest work, the whisper opera, receives its world premiere on May 30 at the MCA in Chicago by the International Contemporary Ensemble with Tony Arnold as solo soprano.

This one-of-a-kind work is performed with the musicians, singer, and audience enclosed in an intimate, onstage set. Composed for flute, clarinet, percussion, cello, and solo soprano, the music and the environment work together to convey themes of secrets, and the tension between what we hide and what we choose to reveal…

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…

“[the writings] are enchanted unaccompanied choral pieces, jewel-like in their crystalline beauty and performed with just the right degree of gentle detachment by Cappella Amsterdam.”
— Andrew Clements, The Guardian

Conductor Daniel Reuss and Cappella Amsterdam’s premiere recording of David Lang’s a cappella cycle the writings is now available on Pentatone Records and all streaming services…

This weekend, David Lang wrote a fun article for the New York Times!

“…It’s like car mechanics talking about the wiring under the hood — good wiring is essential but cars exist because ordinary people need to get places. So I was feeling isolated from the audience, and itching to get back into the real world, where the real listeners live…”

Check out the full article…

NPR Music announced their 25 Favorite Albums of the Year (so far)… and David Lang’s ‘death speaks’ is on their list!

Here’s what they have to say about it:

You probably wouldn’t expect The National‘s Bryce Dessner and My Brightest Diamond‘s Shara Worden to work on a classically focused project inspired by Franz Schubert, but that’s exactly what happens within composer David Lang‘s amazing Death Speaks, which also features Nico Muhly playing piano and Owen Pallett on violin…

Rome is the set for Torino Vocal Ensemble, as they record David’s piece ‘I lie’ for Paolo Sorrentino’s new film La Grande Bellezza, conducted by Carlo Boccadoro. The film’s soundtrack also includes David’s ‘world to come.’

Here’s a short clip of the group behind the scenes:

From September 19-21, David Lang is the composer-in-residence at the Carlsbad Music Festival, with his music being featured throughout the festival, including the US premiere of his choral work when we were children, performed by Sacra/Profana.

The festival also features the new string orchestra, Renga, conducted and organized by Steve Schick, in a performance of darker…