David Lang has been appointed as holder of the Richard and Barbara Debs Composer’s Chair for Carnegie Hall’s 2013–2014 season. Full details about the concert activities associated with his residency will be shared in late-January as part of Carnegie Hall’s full 2013–2014 season announcement. But we can reveal that a key element of his season-long appointment includes a special collaborative workshop in November 2013, offering commissioning opportunities for composers and chamber ensembles.
Creating New Music will invite several young composers and chamber ensembles to work together on the creation and performance of new works specially commissioned by Carnegie Hall…
Julia Wolfe has been announced as the Richard and Barbara Debs Composer’s Chair at Carnegie Hall for the 2021–2022 season. Wolfe creates music that has been described as emotionally charged, viscerally powerful, and socially conscious. As a composer, she responds to the world around her, bringing unsung histories to life in riveting musical tableaux, with a focus on the multifaceted history of the American worker…
In October 2007 Paul Hillier and Theatre of Voices premiered David Lang’s the little match girl passion at Carnegie Hall. People in the audience that night knew they had heard something special. But this special? Only a few months later the piece won the Pulitzer Prize, then the recording on Harmonia Mundi won a Grammy, and the piece has gone on to become a hit around the world.
Carnegie Hall and Stanford Lively Arts bring back Theatre of Voices and the little match girl passion, along with the premiere of a major new work they have commissioned just for the occasion…
This season Julia Wolfe’s large works for string orchestra, Fuel and Cruel Sister, are performed at Carnegie Hall by two of the country’s leading interpretors of contemporary works.
I wanted to tell a story. A particular story—in fact, the story of The Little Match Girl, by the Danish author Hans Christian Andersen. The original is ostensibly for children, and it has that shocking combination of danger and morality that many famous children’s stories do. A poor young girl, whose father beats her, tries unsuccessfully to sell matches on the street, is ignored, and freezes to death. Through it all she somehow retains her Christian purity of spirit, but it is not a pretty story…
David Lang — Carnegie Hall’s 2013–2014 Richard and Barbara Debs Composer’s Chair — embodies the restless spirit of invention with his creation of new forms that defy categorization. The musically omnivorous creator references folk, pop, and jazz influences in his compositions, while at the same time being deeply rooted in the classical tradition.
His cultural openness also informs the performers with whom he collaborates…
As part of the 2013/2014 Debs Chair composer-in-residence at Carnegie Hall, David Lang has curated an amazing series of concerts to focus on the art of storytelling in music. From April 22-29, Carnegie Hall presents: Collected Stories
Lang comments on the mini-festival:
Music and storytelling began their lives together—music to accompany heroic tales, music to worship by, music to suggest the emotions running deep below the surface of a text…