Bang on a Can & Noguchi Museum's MUSIC IN THE GARDEN Summer Concert Series Kicks Off in June

Bang on a Can and The Noguchi Museum partner for the fourth summer in presenting Music in the Garden, an innovative performance series held in the Museum's celebrated sculpture garden on Sunday afternoons at 3pm. All concerts are free with Museum admission.

New York-based electric guitar quartet Dither kicks off this summer's series on June 8, performing music by John Zorn, David Lang and more. Dither features some of the leading young guitarists in the New York contemporary scene. Formed in 2007, the quartet comprises Taylor Levine, Joshua Lopes, James Moore and Gyan Riley. Dither has worked with a wide range of contemporary artists and developed a sound spanning composed music, improvisation and electronic manipulation. Henceforth released the group's debut self-titled album in 2010. The New York Times reported, "Incorporating elements of noise-rock, dreampop, guitar jazz, classical and the avant-garde, Dither's dense, hypnotic, overtone-laden instrumentals are imaginative, clever, sometimes subtly funny, other times flat-out assaultive."

On July 13, Music in the Garden will present Bang on Ja-pan, a concert specially curated by Bang on Can including music by Japanese composer Dai Fujikura alongside two contemporary Japanese masters, Toru Takemitsu and Somei Satoh. The music will be performed by flutists Kelli Kathmann and Jessica Schmitz, and singer Daisy Press, all alumni of the Bang on a Can Summer Music Festival at MASS MoCA.

On August 10, the celebrated New York string ensemble JACK Quartet will perform works from composer Ken Thomson's new CD from Cantaloupe Music, THAW. THAW is a four-part suite that melts, liquefies, re-freezes and realigns the composer's demands on the traditional string quartet, making THAW a project that only the famed JACK Quartet could tackle. Known for their ability to lend a palpable sense of electricity to the most complex pieces by such composers as Iannis Xenakis and Georg Friedrich Haas, the four members of JACK have built up a mind-meld of instinctive communication over their many years of collaboration.

Multi-instrumentalist and singer Caleb Burhans will close out the Music in the Garden series on September 14 performing selections from his 2013 album, Evensong and more. Evensong is Burhans' debut album as a lead composer and recording artist, though he has long been recognized as a vital presence on the New York new music scene. Burhans is a composer, plays violin, viola, electric guitar, electric bass, banjo, mandolin, piano and sings countertenor as well as tenor. He has been hailed by The New York Times as, "animated and versatile," and, "New York's mohawked Mozart" by Time Out New York. Burhans is a founding member of Alarm Will Sound, itsnotyouitsme, Signal and the Wordless Music Orchestra. He is also a member of ACME, Newspeak and the disco band Escort.

The Noguchi Museum is located at 9-01 33rd Road (at Vernon Boulevard), Long Island City, New York. It is open from Wednesday through Friday, 10-5 (open until 8 on first Fridays of June-September); Saturday and Sunday, 11-6; closed Monday and Tuesday. Admission is $10 for adults, $5 for students and seniors, free for children twelve and under and for all New York City public-school students. 718.204.7088; www.noguchi.org.

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 27 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 for the last 27 years, 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. For up-to-date information regarding Bang on a Can programs, events, and CD releases, please visit www.bangonacan.org.

The Noguchi Museum: The Noguchi Museum occupies a renovated industrial building dating from the 1920s. The first museum in America to be founded by a living artist to show his or her work, the Museum comprises ten indoor galleries and an internationally celebrated outdoor sculpture garden. It exhibits a comprehensive selection of the artist's works in stone, metal, wood, and clay, as well as models for public projects and gardens, dance sets, and his Akari Light Sculptures. Together, this installation and the Museum's diverse special exhibitions offer a rich, contextualized view of Noguchi's work and illuminate his influential legacy of innovation. For more information, visit www.noguchi.org.

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