As part of the 2013/2014 Debs Chair composer-in-residence at Carnegie Hall, David Lang has curated an amazing series of concerts to focus on the art of storytelling in music. From April 22-29, Carnegie Hall presents: Collected Stories

Lang comments on the mini-festival:

Music and storytelling began their lives together—music to accompany heroic tales, music to worship by, music to suggest the emotions running deep below the surface of a text…

I have worked with So Percussion for a very long time now and I know them really well. When I got the opportunity to write a concerto for them I wanted to make it specifically for them, for the things that they have been concentrating on for the past few years. The are frequently theatrical, they invite found objects into their performances, they build their own instruments, etc. I wondered if I could make the unusualness of their musicality the centerpiece of this concerto, but how could an orchestra of ‘normal’ instruments doing mostly ‘normal’ things find common ground with them?…