After its acclaimed world premiere in June 2019 with the New York Philharmonic, David Lang’s fully-staged opera, prisoner of the state, directed by Elkhanah Pulitzer, begins a European premiere tour 11 January at the Barbican Centre in London with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, BBC Singers and conductor Ilan Volkov.

prisoner of the state was co-commissioned by the New York Philharmonic, Rotterdam’s De Doelen, London’s Barbican Centre, Barcelona’s l’Auditori, Germany’s Bochum Symphony Orchestra, Belgium’s Concertgebouw Bruges and Sweden’s Malmö Opera…

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.”