David Lang is one of the most thoughtful composers working today. His music is consistently probing, emotionally urgent, strange, and beautiful. It is also getting simpler as the years roll on—a sign that the mind behind it is undergoing a kind of ritualistic purification. I’ve been obsessed with David’s music since I bought a recording by mail order of his piece cheating lying stealing when I was in high school, and I have written a piano piece called David Lang Needs a Hug…
Jacob Druckman’s Horizons
an article for an unpublished Druckman memorial edition of Contemporary Music Review, (2000), Harold Meltzer, editor.
What we are celebrating with this festival is all the new music.
So wrote Jacob Druckman in the program booklet for Horizons ’84, The New Romanticism – A Broader View, the second festival of three that Druckman curated for the New York Philharmonic in 1983, 1984 and 1986. The statement is not totally true – the Horizons Festivals were never supposed to be about all the new music…continue reading