news

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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news

David Lang curates New Music Dublin festival

March 6 and 7, David Lang curates the 2015 New Music Dublin festival What?…Wow: David Lang’s Festival of Music.

Lang’s festival spans six concerts over two days including the Irish premiere of his man made, performed by the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra with New York-based quartet So Percussion; the Irish premiere of Julia Wolfe’s Appalachia-inspired Steel Hammer, performed by the Bang on a Can All-Stars with Norwegian vocal ensemble Trio Mediaeval; and the world premiere of Michael Gordon‘s new work for the Dublin Guitar Quartet

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news

NYRB Review: ‘the loser’

Francine Prose9/13/2016 The Loser, David Lang’s beautiful and startlingly original opera, had its world premiere this month at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Composed for a solo baritone, a chamber ensemble, and a concert pianist, the opera (Lang not only wrote the music but is also responsible for the libretto and the stage direction) has been adapted from the Thomas Bernhard novel of the same name—a book which, since its publication in 1983, has attracted an almost cultish following…

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news

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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interviews

BOMB Magazine

December 1, 2012

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David Lang is one of the most thoughtful composers working today. His music is consistently probing, emotionally urgent, strange, and beautiful. It is also getting simpler as the years roll on—a sign that the mind behind it is undergoing a kind of ritualistic purification. I’ve been obsessed with David’s music since I bought a recording by mail order of his piece cheating lying stealing when I was in high school, and I have written a piano piece called David Lang Needs a Hug…

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news

Tallis Scholars perform ‘sun-centered’ at Carnegie Hall

“Tallis Scholars: the rock stars of Renaissance vocal music!”
The New York Times

On Monday April 8 — appropriately, the 2024 Solar EclipseThe Tallis Scholars give the New York premiere of David Lang’s sun-centered at Carnegie Hall/Zankel Hall. Commissioned for the Tallis Scholars by Cal Performances, Carnegie Hall Corporation, Hopkins Center, John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Stanford Live, Virginia Tech and Concertgebouw Bruges (Belgium), the work is a meditation on humanity’s predilection for disbelief…

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love fail premieres at Yale

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…

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‘the little match girl passion’ version for chorus receives German premiere

[video:http://youtu.be/lH-giL7c7Ts?t=1m8s width:250 height:250 align:center]
Click to watch Paul Hillier conduct the little match girl passion (chamber version)

On Saturday September 15, Paul Hillier and Rundfunkchor Berlin give the German premiere of David Lang’s Pulitzer Prize-winning composition, the little match girl passion in its arrangement for full chorus.

the little match girl passion, the winner of the 2008 Pulitzer Prize in music is a 35-minute work for a quartet of singers each playing percussion instruments, co-commissioned by the Carnegie Hall Corporation and The Perth Theater and Concert Hall…

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news

David Lang is Musical America’s 2013 Composer of the Year

Musical America, now in its third century as the indispensable resource for the performing arts, announced the winners of the annual Musical America Awards, recognizing artistic excellence and achievement in the arts.

The announcement coincides with the publication of the 2013 Musical America International Directory of the Performing Arts, which, in addition to its comprehensive industry listings, pays homage to each of these artists in its editorial pages.

The annual Musical America Awards, sponsored by Deutsche Grammophon will be presented in a special ceremony at Lincoln Center on Thursday, December 6…

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