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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…

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

David Lang is the composer-in-residence at Rotterdam’s de Doelen center, with 11 concerts featuring Lang’s music throughout the 2014/15 season:

Percussion HeavenResidentie Orchestra & So Percussion Sunday, November 30, 2014 at 20.15 VocaalLabthe little match girl passion Wednesday, December 17, 2014 at 20:30 Ensemble KlangKlang, Dance, Bang, Can Monday January 12, 2015 at 20.15 the whisper operaInternational Contemporary Ensemble, New York Monday, February 9, 2015 at 19:00 the whisper operaInternational Contemporary Ensemble, New York Monday, February 9, 2015 at 22:00 the whisper OperaInternational Contemporary Ensemble, New York Tuesday, February 10, 2015 at 19:00 the whisper OperaInternational Contemporary Ensemble, New York Tuesday, February 10, 2015 at 22:00 Ralph van RaatZappa’s Black Page Sunday, May 3, 2015 at 20:15 Anonymous4David Lang – love fail Tuesday, May 26, 2015 at 20:30 Anonymous4David Lang – love fail Wednesday, May 27, 2015 at 20:30 DoelenEnsembleDavid Lang – death speaks Friday, May 29, 2015 at 22:00

On August 13, David Lang’s the public domain was given its world premiere at Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival.

Read a selection of reviews of the performance, plus video of the show from the NY Times:

click here for New York Times review.

video from NY Times livestream:

NPR review:

click to read the NYT review

“…the score is a model of how music can animate words. The text is set with impressive clarity, and Mr. Gilfry sings every phrase with crisp diction and dramatic point, delivering phrases with virile energy, sudden bluster, or, during vulnerable moments, an aching confusion that takes you by surprise.”
— Anthony Tommasini, The New York Times

On February 8, in Benaryoa Hall, conductor Ludovic Morlot and the Seattle Symphony premiere David Lang’s first symphony: symphony without a hero, commissioned for the Seattle Symphony by the Lynn and Brian Grant Family. The 27-minute work is in one movement, with two related parts — two separate musical movements that are performed simultaneously: one heavy and oppressive and one light and hopeful. Lang explains that one doesn’t “really hear the light and hopeful music until the oppressive movement ends.”

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…