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 […]
Read MoreDavid Lang, ‘again (after ecclesiastes)’ June 14, 2022 10:35 AM ET Tom Huizenga David Lang‘s again (after ecclesiastes) opens with sections of the Cappella Amsterdam choir, from high to low, interlacing on the phrase “People come and people go / The earth goes on and on.” The words are from Ecclesiastes, a curious book of The Old […]
Read More“[the writings] are enchanted unaccompanied choral pieces, jewel-like in their crystalline beauty and performed with just the right degree of gentle detachment by Cappella Amsterdam.” — Andrew Clements, The Guardian Conductor Daniel Reuss and Cappella Amsterdam’s premiere recording of David Lang’s a cappella cycle the writings is now available on Pentatone Records and all streaming services. Originally commissioned by […]
Read MoreIn April and May, The Tallis Scholars premiered sun-centered, a work commissioned to share a program with Antoine Brumel’s monumental Missa “Et ecce terræ motus” — a Renaissance mass for 12 voices that gets its name from a scrap of chant whose text means ‘and the earth moved.’ Lang describes the connection: This scrap of text […]
Read MoreJulia Wolfe’s 2021-2022 Carnegie Hall Debs Composer’s Chair residency commences with the video premiere of Oxygen, a rapid-fire composition for 12 flutes. Written during the pandemic and filmed in October 2021, Oxygen features an all-star cast of flutists coming together to collaborate after more than a year of artistic isolation. The work was commissioned by the […]
Read MoreFebruary 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 […]
Read MoreThe 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 […]
Read MoreUntil 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 […]
Read More20 years ago, just a few months after the world-changing events of 9/11, Michael Gordon traveled to Switzerland to see the Basel Sinfonietta and conductor Kasper de Roo premiere his concert-length work for orchestra, Decasia, which accompanied a film by Bill Morrison — now itself a cult classic that is studied in film schools around […]
Read MoreOn October 13 the Nederlands Kamerkoor premieres the writings at the Muziekgebouw in Amsterdam. They perform the work in 5 additional Dutch cities through October 24 — click here for more details. the writings — co-commissioned by Carnegie Hall for Paul Hillier and Theatre of Voices — combines some old and some new works into an hour-long piece: ·· again (after […]
Read More