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David Lang: The Writings album review — emotion, poetry, tenderness
NPR Interview with Michael Gordon: El Sol Caliente premiere
Listen to an audio piece about how composer Michael Gordon and filmmaker Bill Morrison work together and what went into their 13th collaboration, inspired by the 100th anniversary of the city of Miami Beach.
The composer Michael Gordon and filmmaker Bill Morrison have been fusing their visions for upwards of 17 years …
continue readingBig risks and adventurous friends: How composer Julia Wolfe became a renegade
Sometimes, all you need is a little push. In the fall of 1976, when Julia Wolfe arrived at the University of Michigan from Pennsylvania, she was just 17 and viewed herself as a “wild teenager” with her sights on social sciences and politics. Activism was a possible path. Music wasn’t on her radar.
But one day, a friend coaxed Wolfe into taking a peculiar music class, taught by a forward-thinking Quaker who didn’t care how much you knew about composing…
continue reading‘the little match girl passion’: Best of 21st Century
The Guardian UK has listed David Lang’s the little match girl passion as one of the top 25 works of classical music written in the 21st Century. The composition received a Pulitzer Prize, the recording won a Grammy Award, and the score has since become one of the most performed new works in the world.
the little match girl passion has been staged by Glimmerglass Opera and Portland Opera, choreographed by the Paris Opera Ballet and the Royal Swedish Ballet, with theatrical productions in Moscow, London, Edinburgh, and Sydney…
continue readingJuly: 20 pianists perform 31 solos…. one each day of July.
Michael Gordon
July
live.bangonacan.org
JULY 1 – 31
In spring of 2020, in isolation, I wrote a short piano piece every day. At the end of the day I would send the piece to the pianist Vicky Chow. On each day in July 2020, Vicky released the 31 piano works, one a day, on Instagram. Now in 2021 we are sharing July with an amazing array of pianists …
continue readingConcertgebouw Orchestra streams ‘Fountain of Youth’
Until February 6, the fiery Concertgebouw Orchestra, with the terrific conductor Klaus Mäkelä, streams Wolfe’s recent piece: Fountain of Youth. Click here to watch their performance.
The piece is noisy, it’s youthful. Washboards! Wild trumpet screams!
People have searched for the fountain of youth for thousands of years. The thought was that if you bathed in or drank from the fountain of youth you would be transformed, rejuvenated…
continue readingYarn/Wire reprises ‘Material’ at The Momentary in Arkansas
The ferocious piano/percussion quartet Yarn/Wire reprised their 2016 premiere of Material January 28-29 at The Momentary in Bentonville, Arkansas.
Gordon writes:
Outside my window on Desbrosses Street, a giant piledriver is rhythmically knocking a metal column into the earth. From my studio I hear the resonance, a complex palette of ringing overtones which linger in the air for a few seconds and then disappear…
continue readingEighth Blackbird premieres ‘composition as explanation’
February 25-26, Eighth Blackbird premieres David Lang’s composition as explanation at Duke Performances. The new work is a nod to Gertrude Stein’s candid and circular 1926 lecture. Lang integrates composition and innovative aspects of theater, performance, and choreography. To create actors out of Eighth Blackbird, Lang sought out director Anne Bogart, co-artistic director of SITI Company. With Bogart at the helm, Lang envisions a new kind of musical artist, one with the formal training of actors on stage…
continue reading2022 Artistic Director of Finland’s Avanti! Summer Sounds Festival
I am excited to join the Avanti musicians for the 2022 festival entitled “Body Language.” Each concert has its own unique design – setting up sympathetic resonances and contrasts to create unfolding sonic journeys. New American music abounds. Historic renegades sit side by side with music hot-off-the press. Many of my own works will be performed in Finland for the very first time, including Steel Hammer featuring the magical voices of Trio Mediaeval, and riSE and fLY with the rapid-fire body percussion of Colin Currie, Cruel Sister, Big Beautiful Dark and Scary (version for orchestra), among others…
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