“Art songs have been moving out of classical music in the last many years,” writes composer David Lang. “Indie rock seems to be the place where Schubert’s sensibilities now lie, a better match for direct story telling and intimate emotionality.”

Lang’s death speaks, along with his work depart, is released on Cantaloupe music on April 30.

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In death speaks — co-commissioned by Carnegie Hall and Stanford Lively Arts, and written for Bryce Dessner, Nico Muhly, Owen Pallett and Shara Worden — Lang explores art song with the help of a group of classically trained artists who made their careers in the indie rock world…

By MICHAEL COOPER APRIL 4, 2017

LEWISBURG, Pa. — Onstage, a choir intoned the names of coal miners whose deaths and injuries had landed them on the Pennsylvania Mining Accident index more than a century ago. In the lobby, members of the audience — some of whom came on free shuttle buses that picked them up from nearby coal towns — created an index of their own, writing about their mining ancestors in a small leather notebook held open with a coal paperweight…