Carnegie Hall to Present THREE GENERATIONS Curated by Steve Reich

On Wednesday, April 19, 2017 at 7:30pm in Zankel Hall, Carnegie Hall will present Three Generations: Michael Gordon, David Lang, and Julia Wolfe, curated by Steve Reich as part of his 80th birthday season celebration as Carnegie Hall's Richard and Barbara Debs Composer's Chair, featuring music by Bang on a Can co-founders Gordon (Yo Shakespeare, 1992), Lang (cheating, lying, stealing, 1993/95), and Wolfe (Lick, 1994; Early That Summer, 1993). The concert highlights music written in the 1990s by these three celebrated composers, and comes as the multifaceted organization they founded, Bang on a Can, celebrates its 30th anniversary throughout 2017.

"Steve Reich shook the foundation of the ground we stand on," Michael Gordon says. "He rearranged the atomic structure of music, sparking off a golden age of American composition."

The April 19 performance features the Bang on a Can All-Stars (Ashley Bathgate, cello; Robert Black, bass; Vicky Chow, piano; David Cossin, percussion; Mark Stewart, electric guitar; Ken Thomson, clarinets/saxophone); JACK Quartet; and special guests Todd Reynolds, violin; Kelli Kathman, Roberta Michel flute; Peter Hess, saxophones; David Friend, keyboard; Michael Gordon, keyboard; and Nathan Koci, accordion. Reich's Three Generations concert series also includes music from the 1970s by John Adams and Terry Riley (March 30); music from the 1980s by Arvo Pärt, Philip Glass, and Reich (April 6); and music written in the 2000s by Bryce Dessner and Nico Muhly (April 26).

Bang on a Can has a long relationship with Steve Reich going back to the very first Bang on a Can Marathon in 1987, in which Reich was a featured guest. In the early 1990s, Reich began to take players from the Bang on a Can All-Stars into his own ensemble and on tour; he employed guitarist Mark Stewart for Electric Counterpoint (1987); clarinetist Evan Ziporyn for New York Counterpoint (1985); pianist Lisa Moore for ensemble works; and percussionist David Cossin (who replaced Steven Schick on percussion in 2002) for his unique and creative Piano/Video Phase (1967/2000). In 1997, Reich invited Bang on a Can to record for his retrospective box set on Nonesuch. Reich has also been the featured composer-in-residence three times at Bang on a Can's Summer Music Festival at MASS MoCA since 2002, and collaborated with the group frequently during his 2011 75th birthday season tours.

In his work with Bang on a Can, Reich recognized that a younger generation of musicians had emerged that embraced his music and brought to it a whole new set of chops - the ability to play his rhythms naturally and the stamina to concentrate through the continuous repetitive patterns. He began to look to Bang on a Can as a core group from a new generation that could realize his vision. At the same time, Bang on a Can co-founders Gordon, Lang, and Wolfe found in Reich a mentor and colleague, who both encouraged and challenged them.

Michael Gordon's Yo Shakespeare (1992) was written for the London-based ensemble, Icebreaker, following an introduction to James Poke, the founder of the ensemble, by Louis Andriessen. Gordon writes of the work, "I wanted to write visceral music, and I thought of Yo Shakespeare as three salsa bands playing simultaneously, at different but related speeds. I divided the 13 musicians into three groups, one playing the 16th-note pulse, one playing eighth notes and split triplets and, finally, one playing dotted eighths and quarter notes. One of the oddities of working with Icebreaker is that they sent over a list of rules, a manifesto of sorts, that they asked me to follow, including a rule that the band has final approval of the title of the piece. For fun, I submitted three titles and asked them to choose. Yo Shakespeare was a title I came up with because a friend of mine had begun calling me Shakespeare as a way to connect me in his mind to 'culture.' I also thought the title was a nice nod from an American composer to a group of UK musicians."

David Lang's cheating, lying, stealing (1993, rev. 1995) is about the messages classical composers are trying to convey when they write a piece of music. While most composers write to highlight their strengths, Lang asks, "What would it be like if composers based pieces on what they thought was wrong with them? cheating, lying, stealing is phrased in a comic way, but it is looking at something dark. There is a swagger, but it is not trustworthy. In fact, the instruction in the score for how to play it says: 'Ominous funk.'"

Julia Wolfe's Lick was written for the All-Stars in 1994, and embodies the energy of pop music that influencEd Wolfe at the time. She writes of the work, "Motown, funk, rock - this is the music I grew up on - listening, dancing to it. It has a certain kind of freedom to it. Lick has a lot of meanings and the piece has to do with all the meanings you can think of. It's saucy and it has an edge. It's impatient; although it stays with things for a long time, it hammers at them. I took a fragment, a lick, and magnified it."

Wolfe's Early That Summer (1993) for string quartet is named for a phrase Wolfe came across repeatedly in a book about U.S. political history, which always preceded a description of a snowball of events ending in a major political crisis. She writes, "I realized that the music I was writing was exactly like this - that I was creating a constant state of anticipation and forward build."

About Bang on a Can: Bang on a Can is dedicated to making music new. Since its first Marathon concert in 1987, Bang on a Can has been creating an international community dedicated to innovative music, wherever it is found. With adventurous programs, it commissions new composers, performs, presents, and records new work, develops new audiences, and educates the musicians of the future. Bang on a Can is building a world in which powerful new musical ideas flow freely across all genres and borders. Bang on a Can plays "a central role in fostering a new kind of audience that doesn't concern itself with boundaries. If music is made with originality and integrity, these listeners will come" (The New York Times).

Over 30 years, Bang on a Can has grown from a one-day New York-based Marathon concert (on Mother's Day in 1987 in a SoHo art gallery) to a multi-faceted performing arts organization with a broad range of year-round international activities. "When we started Bang on a Can in 1987, in an art gallery in SoHo, we never imagined that our one-day, 12-hour marathon festival of mostly unknown music would morph into a giant international organization dedicated to the support of experimental music, wherever we would find it," write Bang on a Can Co-Founders Michael Gordon, David Lang and Julia Wolfe. "But it has, and we are so gratified to be still hard at work, all these years later. The reason is really clear to us - we started this organization because we believed that making new music is a utopian act-that people needed to hear this music and they needed to hear it presented in the most persuasive way, with the best players, with the best programs, for the best listeners, in the best context. Our commitment to changing the environment for this music has kept us busy and growing, and we are not done yet."

Current projects include the annual Bang on a Can Marathon; The People's Commissioning Fund, a membership program to commission emerging composers; the Bang on a Can All-Stars, who tour to major festivals and concert venues around the world every year; recording projects; the Bang on a Can Summer Music Festival - a professional development program for young composers and performers led by today's pioneers of experimental music; Asphalt Orchestra, Bang on a Can's extreme street band that offers mobile performances re-contextualizing unusual music; Found Sound Nation, a new technology-based musical outreach program now partnering with the State Department of the United States of America to create OneBeat, a revolutionary, post-political residency program that uses music to bridge the gulf between young American musicians and young musicians from developing countries; cross-disciplinary collaborations and projects with DJs, visual artists, choreographers, filmmakers and more. Each new program has evolved to answer specific challenges faced by today's musicians, composers and audiences, in order to make innovative music widely accessible and wildly received. Bang on a Can's inventive and aggressive approach to programming and presentation has created a large and vibrant international audience made up of people of all ages who are rediscovering the value of contemporary music.