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…
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…
“With his winning of the Pulitzer Prize for the little match girl passion (one of the most original and moving scores of recent years), Lang, once a postminimalist enfant terrible, has solidified his standing as an American master.”
— The New Yorker
Passionate, prolific, and complicated, composer David Lang embodies the restless spirit of invention. Lang is at the same time deeply versed in the classical tradition and committed to music that resists categorization, constantly creating new forms…
Oral History of American Music (OHAM) is the only ongoing project in the field of music dedicated to the collection and preservation of oral and video memoirs in the voices of the creative musicians of our century.
