Bang on a Can's 2016-2017 Season Announced

Bang on a Can's 2016-2017 season continues the "relentlessly inventive" (New York Magazine) new music collective's mission to create an international community dedicated to innovative music, wherever it is found, with performances throughout the U.S., Canada, and Europe, plus two new Bang on a Can Institutes for emerging composers and performers in Neuwied, Germany (November 21-26, 2016) and Abu Dhabi (February 2-5, 2017). Bang on a Can's New York season includes its annual People's Commissioning Fund Concert (January 9); a special concert at Carnegie Hall curated by Steve Reich celebrating the music of Bang on a Can co-founders Michael Gordon, David Lang, and Julia Wolfe (April 19); the 30th Anniversary Bang on a Can Marathon (May 2017), and ongoing "Bang on a Can Presents" curating partnerships with The Jewish Museum and The Noguchi Museum. In addition, Julia Wolfe's Pulitzer Prize-winning work Anthracite Fields will tour the U.S. throughout spring 2017 and the All-Stars will continue to premiere new works in their Field Recordings initiative internationally.

Bang on a Can has appeared annually throughout the U.S. and Europe's most prestigious concert halls and festivals, as well as in Argentina, Australia, China, Korea, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, and Russia. The New York Times reports, "[Bang on a Can's] impact has been profound and pervasive. The current universe of do-it-yourself concert series, genre-flouting festivals, composer-owned record labels and amplified, electric-guitar-driven compositional idioms would probably not exist without their pioneering example." Now, Bang on a Can brings the community-fostering model it has developed for the past 15 years in its annual Bang on a Can Summer Music Festival at MASS MoCA in North Adams, MA, to two new locations - Neuwied, Germany in partnership with Villa Musica Rheinland-Pfalz, and Abu Dhabi in partnership with NYU Abu Dhabi. In both locations, Bang on a Can All-Stars members as well as co-founders Gordon, Lang, and Wolfe will work with students and young professionals to explore American contemporary music, passing on the Bang on a Can ethos and approach to "making music new" to the next generation of musicians and bringing an unexpected view of what American music is to other parts of the world.

"We hope that the young musicians will gain a deep insight into Bang on a Can's amazing music making, that they will have the chance to dive into a different world of music that they are not familiar with, so that they can incorporate the vibrant Bang on a Can style into their own music," says Nora Krahl of Villa Musica Rheinland-Pfalz. "The foundation is looking forward to a week of intense musical exchange. Villa Musica is thrilled to present the members of the Bang on a Can All-Stars in several concerts to give the German audience a chance to explore this unique American culture of contemporary music." With Villa Musica, Bang on a Can will conduct seminars and present several concerts of American music during a one-week festival at the Frankfurter Hof in Mainz and the Baroque Castle Engers in Neuwied, with members of the All-Stars performing alongside a group of young musicians from Germany. The festival will also include world premieres of two newly commissioned works and will conclude with a signature Bang on a Can Marathon concert.

"We're excited to bring Bang on a Can to Abu Dhabi to help develop the artist community in the region - bringing their boundary-crossing, expansive approach to music-making, and sharing advanced instrumental techniques," says Bill Bragin, Executive Artistic Director, The Arts Center at NYU Abu Dhabi. In Abu Dhabi, in addition to working with young musicians from the region and abroad, the Bang on a Can All-Stars will perform music from their ongoing multimedia project Field Recordings, plus Julia Wolfe's Steel Hammer with Siti Company directed by Ann Bogart, and will give the world premiere of a new piece by celebrated Emirati-American composer Mohammed Fairouz, commissioned for the occasion by The Arts Center and the Abu Dhabi Festival.

In addition, Bang on a Can brings a diverse group of young musicians from throughout the world together in the U.S. for the fifth annualOneBeat, organized by Bang on a Can's Found Sound Nation in partnership with the U.S. Department of State's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. OneBeat is an adventurous new model of cultural diplomacy which brings 25 musicians (ages 19-35) from 17 different countries to perform original works and lead participatory workshops with diverse American communities along the route of the Great Migration, beginning in Florida on September 10 and ending in Chicago on October 11. OneBeat's wonderfully eclectic musicians include an underground producer and rapper from Santiago de Cuba, a visionary Kaohsiung-based sound artist, a Muscovite gusli player (the oldest Russian multi-string plucked instrument), a virtuosa darbuka player from Istanbul, a soul singer from Seattle, and 20 other incredible artists. Learn more about these events and upcoming workshops here.

Bang on a Can's 2016-2017 performance season begins with the world premiere of David Lang's newest work the loser, opening the Brooklyn Academy Of Music (BAM)'s Next Wave Festival on September 7-11 at the BAM Howard Gilman Opera House. In this daringly staged one-act opera from Pulitzer Prize-winning composer David Lang, featuring mezzanine-only seating and based on the novel by Austrian writer Thomas Bernhard, a failed piano student - baritone Rod Gilfry - recounts a life lived in The Shadows of his famous friend Glenn Gould. As virtuoso pianist Conrad Tao and a chamber ensemble conducted by Karina Canellakis accompany from far in the distance, the cavernous space engulfs the singer, as he sings of the distance that separates beauty from perfection.

In October-November 2017 Bang on a Can All-Stars tour Europe with a program of their on-going commissioning initiative Field Recordings. Performances include the Venice Biennale in Venice, Italy (October 10), the "Greatest Hits Festival" in Hamburg, Germany (November 18) and the ARS Musica Festival in Brussels, Belgium (November 19). In addition, on May 27, 2017, Bang on a Can All-Stars will perform a set of selections from Field Recordings at the Toronto Royal Conservatory of Music including the world premiere of a new work by Canadian composer John Oswald, a special commission for this occasion. Field Recordings is an ongoing multimedia project featuring nearly 30 commissioned works by Tyondai Braxton, Mira Calix, Jace Clayton, Anna Clyne, Dan Deacon, Bryce Dessner, Ben Frost, Florent Ghys, Michael Gordon, Jóhann Jóhannsson, Inhyun Kim, Glenn Kotche, David Lang, Alvin Lucier, Rene Lussier, Christian Marclay, Paula Matthusen, Richard Reed Parry, Steve Reich, Todd Reynolds, Jaros?aw ?liwi?ski, Caroline Shaw, Daniel Wohl, Krzysztof Wo?ek, Julia Wolfe, Artur Zagajewski, Nick Zammuto, and Zhang Shouwang. Says David Lang: "Field Recordings is a kind of ghost story. We asked composers from different parts of the music world to find a recording of something that already exists - a voice, a sound, a faded scrap of melody - and then write a new piece around it. And so they did." Field Recordings taps into film, found sound and obscure audio-visual archives, bridging the gap between the seen and the unseen, the present and the absent, the past and the future, all channeled through the Bang on a Can All-Stars. The All-Stars' recording of Field Recordings was released by Cantaloupe Music in May 2015. Listen to the album here (Password: Field2015).

In New York on January 9, 2017 the All-Stars take the stage at Kaufman Music Center's Merkin Concert Hall during the Ecstatic Music Festival for the 2017 People's Commissioning Fund Concert, one of the most anticipated and reliable launching pads for emerging composers in New York and beyond, hosted again this year by John Schaefer of WNYC's New Sounds and streamed as a live audio webcast by Q2 Music at q2music.org. Founded in 1997, long before crowd-funding became the norm through Kickstarter and similar sites, Bang on a Can's PCF has pooled contributions of all sizes from hundreds of friends and fans, and since its inception has commissioned over 40 works of music. This year, Bang on a Can's PCF commissions include new works by Nico Muhly, Anna Thorvaldsdottir, Felipe Waller, and more.

Throughout spring 2017, Julia Wolfe's Pulitzer-Prize winning oratorio for chorus and instruments, Anthracite Fields, will tour the U.S., with performances at CAL Performances (February 27), Krannert Center for the Performing Arts (March 3), Center for the Performing Arts at Penn State (March 30), Bucknell University (April 1), with the Westminster College Choir (April 22), and at Spoleto USA Festival(June 3). Wolfe wrote the piece after doing extensive research about the coal-mining industry in an area very near where she grew up in Pennsylvania. Her text draws on oral histories, interviews with miners and their families, speeches, geographic descriptions, children's rhymes, and coal advertisements. The recording features the Bang on a Can All-Stars and The Choir of Trinity Wall Street, under the direction of Julian Wachner. The New York Times wrote of the New York premiere of the work, which was a centerpiece of the first NYPHIL BIENNIAL in 2014, "In Ms. Wolfe's polished and stylistically assured cantata, the overall coherence of the musical material helped her expressions of outrage to burn cleanly and brightly." Following the recent west coast premiere at Walt Disney Hall in March 2016, The Los Angeles Times wrote "[Anthracite Fields] captures not only the sadness of hard lives lost...but also of the sweetness and passion of a way of daily life now also lost. The music compels without overstatement. This is a major, profound work." Listen to the album here (Password: Anthra2015)

On April 19, 2017, Carnegie Hall will present Three Generations: David Lang, Julia Wolfe, and Michael Gordon, in Zankel Hall, as part of Steve Reich's curated Three Generations exploration of the changing direction of concert music. The program, which features performances by the Bang on a Can All-Stars & Friends and JACK Quartet will include David Lang's cheating, lying, stealing, Julia Wolfe's Lick and Early That Summer, and Michael Gordon's Yo Shakespeare.

Throughout the 2016-2017 season, Bang on a Can advances its curatorial tradition of partnering the musical and visual art worlds, continuing its relationship with The Jewish Museum and The Noguchi Museum in New York. The series at The Jewish Museum features dynamic musical performances from November 2016 to April 2017, inspired by the Museum's diverse slate of exhibitions, including Pauline Oliveros (November 10), bassist and composer Florent Ghys's band Bonjour (February 16), and Bang on a Can All-Star pianist Vicky Chow in Tristan Perich'sSurface Image (April 27). At The Noguchi Museum, Bang on a Can will continue to present its free summer concert series on each secondSunday from June through September.

Summer 2016 will bring Bang on a Can's 30th Anniversary Bang on a Can Marathon in May and the three-week Bang on a Can Summer Music Festival at MASS MoCA in North Adams in July. (Details will be announced in the spring.)