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

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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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‘the difficulty of crossing a field’ at Nashville Opera

November 9-11, The Nashville Opera presents David Lang’s chamber opera the difficulty of crossing a field.

With this work, Lang and multi-Obie award-winning playwright Mac Wellman have created a radical cross between opera and theater mixing arias with spoken text, emotional melodies with intense drama, and featuring a string quartet as both the ‘orchestra’ and as part of the staging.

Based on a one-page short story by American satirist and abolitionist author,

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Shelter CD in stores and online!!

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It’s been a long time coming, but Shelter is finally here!

The latest collaborative work by Michael Gordon, David Lang, and Julia Wolfe is a modern oratorio that reunites the Bang on a Can founders with Deborah Artman (author of the libretto for 2001’s Lost Objects). Produced by Michael Riesman, this premiere recording was performed by Ensemble Signal under the baton of conductor Brad Lubman, and features solo voices Martha Cluver, Mellissa Hughes and Caroline Shaw

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death speaks on NPR’s “First Listen”

Although we all eventually face death, it’s a topic most avoid — except perhaps for philosophers, who explain it to our heads, and artists, who present it to our hearts.

Composer David Lang offers something for both head and heart — and goes one step further in his new song cycle, Death Speaks. Here, death is less a lofty concept than a personality.

“It isn’t a state of being or a place or a metaphor, but a person, a character in a drama who can tell us in our own language what to expect in the World to Come,” Lang wrote for the Carnegie Hall debut of the piece last year…

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‘whisper opera’ world premiere

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…

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‘man made’ world premiere

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As part of Nico Muhly’s A Scream and an Outrage festival, The Barbican Centre features two premieres by David Lang.

On May 10, So Percussion and the BBC Symphony Orchestra, with conductor Jayce Ogren, give the world premiere of Lang’s concerto for percussion quartet and orchestra, man made. Lang combines found percussion (sticks, pipes, metal trash) with orchestral instruments in a unique and incredibly compelling work commissioned by the Barbican Centre and the Los Angeles Philharmonic…

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NYT Opinionator Blog

May 11, 2011

It’s spring and baseball season is under way again — for me, always a welcome event. Lately, I’ve been thinking about the game and its history. Which reminded me of the recent passing of the baseball legend Duke Snider. And, surprisingly, that made me think of classical music. Honest! I grew up in the 1960s in Los Angeles, a die-hard fan of the Dodgers. I loved baseball, loved going to the games, but I identified with the team in other ways as well…

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