In 1987, David Lang was a 30-year-old composer and doctoral student who, with his Yale buddies Michael Gordon and Julia Wolfe, founded Bang on a Can, a scruffy organization dedicated to the proposition that all musics are created equal. These days, Lang is an eminence: Pulitzer Prize winner, member of the Yale faculty, and composer in residence at Carnegie Hall for 2013-14. Justin Davidson talked with him midway through “collected stories,” a six-concert festival he curated at Carnegie’s Zankel Hall, and days before the release of his recordinglove/fail…
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Michael Alexander
Round Nut Tool
David Lang Wants to Be More Superficial
Bang on a Can All-Stars Premiere Field Recordings
At the Barbican Centre in London, on March 20, 2012, the Bang on a Can All-Stars premiere Field Recordings — with new works by Gordon, Lang and Wolfe. The evening-length project that is as much a mystery as a concert – a kind of ghost story. The ghosts aren’t the physical presence of people gone before, but they are the ghosts of sounds, images, ideas, and voices. Each composer has been asked to find and interact with something recorded before, using the power of music made right in front of us to reach out to other things not present…
continue readingShelter CD in stores and online!!
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…
continue readingSetting 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…
continue reading“pain changes” video premieres on Stereogum.com
pain changes from David Lang’s ‘death speaks’ from Red Poppy Music on Vimeo.
David’s video for “pain changes” from death speaks premieres today on stereogum.com. Additionally, death speaks is released today in limited edition vinyl.
Click here to purchase your copy!
Here is an interview about the video with David, conducted by Shara Worden:
SHARA WORDEN: So David, I’m writing this to you on Halloween…
continue readingDavid 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…
continue readingLang’s score “gorgeous” in Sorrentino’s film premiered at Cannes 2015.
Cannes Film Review: ‘Youth’
Variety MagazineJay Weissberg
Cannes, France — In “The Great Beauty,” there’s a flashback in which a young Jep Gambardella recalls the promise of love — its loss, with the betrayal of youthful ideals, leads to Jep’s crushing self-contempt. It’s a tender moment in a film of deep cynicism, and now Paolo Sorrentino, with “Youth,” delivers his most tender film to date, an emotionally rich contemplation of life’s wisdom gained, lost and remembered — with cynicism harping from the sidelines, but as a wearied chord rather than a major motif…
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