BANG ON A CAN 2009 PEOPLE’S COMMISSIONING FUND CONCERT, APRIL 2ND With Special Guest Lee Ranaldo Dirty Projector’s David Longstreth To Premiere Work
On April 2nd, 2009, New York’s electric chamber ensemble Bang on a Can All-Stars return to New York’s Merkin Hall for their annual People’s Commissioning Fund Concert.
The All-Stars will perform three world premieres by international up-and-coming composers Kate Moore (Australia-Holland), Lok Yin Tang (Hong Kong), and New York’s David Longstreth, also known widely for his ground-breaking indie rock band Dirty Projectors. The second half of the concert is a terrific double-feature: a recently commissioned work by the legendary American composer Alvin Lucier, and the New York Premiere of a live collaboration composed for the group by Lee Ranaldo of Sonic Youth, for which Ranaldo will join the All-Stars on stage. The concert is a special edition of WNYC’s New Sounds Live, hosted by John Schaefer.
Composers Michael Gordon, David Lang, and Julia Wolfe started Bang on a Can in 1987 in New York City as a way to present concerts of music they loved; the enterprise has since grown into one of the most vital, enduring, and beloved forces in America’s new music scene. Dedicated to presenting the work of composers across a wide spectrum, Bang on a Can has carved a home for musical inventors, misfits, and pioneers. For more info: www.bangonacan.org
The People’s Commissioning Fund is a radical partnership between artists and audiences to commission works from adventurous composers. Established in 1998, it has become one of Bang on a Can’s most rewarding and unique programs. Each year, Bang on a Can pools together the contributions of hundreds of people, ranging from $5 to $5,000, to commission works from exciting new composers. Through the PCF, Bang on a Can has put the power to change musical culture in the hands of its audience.
Please inquire about interview availability with Bang on a Can’s Artistic Directors and the musicians and composers participating in this event.
The People’s Commissioning Fund Program:
Lok Yin Tang: Distorted Indulgence
Kate Moore: Ridgeway
David Longstreth: New Work
–intermission—
Alvin Lucier: Canon
Lee Ranaldo: How Deep are Rivers
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COMPOSERS
David Longstreth is an American musician, arranger, producer, and composer. Active since 2002 and frequently reinventing his music and image, Longstreth is widely regarded as an innovator. His recorded music under the Dirty Projectors moniker has ranged from auteur lo-fi production to scored chamber music, voice-and- acoustic-guitar plainsong to outre globalist rock. Longstreth is also known for his distinctive tenor voice, which he often employs as another instrument within the ensemble. He has written music for Alarm Will Sound, the Bang on a Can All-Stars, and his own Orchestral Society for the Preservation of the Orchestra.
Kate Moore has been living and composing in the Netherlands since August 2002. She completed her Master’s degree in music under Louis Andriessen after completing her honours degree in Canberra School of Music at the Australian National University under professor Larry Sitsky. Moore has written for a vast array of ensembles, including Ensemble Syntonia, The Song Company, Ensemble Klang and Orkest De Volharding. She has collaborated with visual artists, including Australian sculptor Jade Oakley, video artists Ronald Aveling and Dr Dennis Del Favero and installation artist Kathi Fries. In 2007 she participated in a residency on the deserted island Inishlacken off the west coast of Ireland, where she created her vocal work Uisce. The work has subsequently toured to Galway (Ireland), Syracuse NY, (America) and Sydney, (Australia). In 2008 she designed and built a giant percussion harp, played by Juan Martinez in the dance work PUUR, choreographed by Neel Verdoorn. Her works have been performed in high–profile festivals such as the International Congress on Women in Music in Beijing (2008), supported by The Australia China Council, Bang on a Can Summer Festival MASSMoCA (2007), the International Gaudeamus Festival (2003) and in venues including the National Gallery of Australia, Muziek Gebouw Aan ‘t Ij in Amsterdam and Theatre des Bouffes du Nord in Paris. For her work she has received a number of awards. In 2008 she was the recipient of the Doris Burnett Ford scholarship supporting her PhD at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. In 2003, she was a prize–winner at the Apeldoorn Young Composer Meeting and, in 2001, a recipient of the Franco-Australian Composition Competition for her work entitled Sketches of Stars. For four years running (1999–2002), she received the Howard Allen Memorial Prize for composition. During her undergraduate studies she was awarded an honours scholarship and the University Medal. Her current projects include new commissions from the ASKO Ensemble and Orgelpark in the Netherlands.
Lok-Yin Tang, born in Hong Kong, is now a doctoral candidate in composition at the Chinese University of Hong Kong where she obtained the masters’ degree in composition. She has received numerous composition awards. In 2006, her Sheng Concerto “Volcanicity” won the Young Composer Award of the International Competition for Chinese Orchestral Composition in Singapore. The chamber ensemble piece “The Giving Tree II” was awarded first prize at the Asian Pacific Festival Young Composer Composition Competition 2007 in New Zealand. In the summer, “Convergence” brought her the Outstanding Prize of the “Palatino” piano composition competition in China. Tang also received the ACL Yoshiro IRINO Memorial Prize in December same year. Last year, Tang received the Fulbright Scholarship, to be a visiting scholar at Columbia University.
Alvin Lucier was born in 1931 in Nashua, New Hampshire. He was educated in Nashua public and parochial schools, the Portsmouth Abbey School, Yale, and Brandeis and spent two years in Rome on a Fulbright Scholarship. From 1962 to 1970 he taught at Brandeis, where he conducted the Brandeis University Chamber Chorus which devoted much of its time to the performance of new music. Since 1970 he has taught at Wesleyan University where he is John Spencer Camp Professor of Music. Lucier has pioneered in many areas of music composition and performance, including the notation of performers’ physical gestures, the use of brain waves in live performance, the generation of visual imagery by sound in vibrating media, and the evocation of room acoustics for musical purposes. His recent works include a series of sound installations and works for solo instruments, chamber ensembles, and orchestra in which, by means of close tunings with pure tones, sound waves are caused to spin through space. Mr. Lucier performs, lectures and exhibits his sound installations extensively in the United States, Europe and Asia. He has visited Japan twice: in 1988 he performed at the Abiko Festival, Tokyo, and installed MUSIC ON A LONG THIN WIRE in Kyoto; in 1992 he toured with pianist Aki Takahashi, performing in Kawasaki, Yamaguchi and Yokohama. In 1990-91 he was a guest of the DAAD Kunstler Program in Berlin. In January 1992, he performed in Delhi, Madras, and Bombay, and during the summer of that year was guest composer at the Time of Music Festival in Vitaasari, Finland. He regularly contributes articles to books and periodicals. His own book, Chambers, written in collaboration with Douglas Simon, was published by the Wesleyan University Press. In addition, several of his works are available on Cramps (Italy), Disques Montaigne, Source, Mainstream, CBS Odyssey, Nonesuch, and Lovely Music Records. In October, 1994, Wesleyan University honored Alvin Lucier with a five-day festival, ALVIN LUCIER: COLLABORATIONS, for which he composed twelve new works, including THEME, based on a poem by John Ashbery and SKIN, MEAT, BONE, a collaborative theater work with Robert Wilson. In April, 1997, Lucier presented a concert of his works on the MAKING MUSIC SERIES at Carnegie Hall and in October of the same year his most recent sound installation, EMPTY VESSELS, was exhibited at the Donaueschingen Music Festival in Germany. Recently, DIAMONDS for three orchestras was performed under the direction of Petr Kotik at the Prague Spring Festival, 1999. In March 1995, REFLECTIONS/REFLEXIONEN, a bi-lingual edition of Lucier’s scores, interviews and writings was published by MusikTexte, Koln.
Lee Ranaldo is a visual artist, writer, and founding member of the New York City group Sonic Youth, who continue to record new music and tour the world on a regular basis. Their most recent record is Rather Ripped [2006, Geffen Records]. An extensive touring museum exhibition, Sonic Youth, etc: Sensational Fix, opens in June 2008 at LIFE, St. Nazaire, France. His visual+sound works have been shown at galleries and museums in Paris, Toronto, New York, London, Sydney, and Vienna. In August 2007 he was artist-in-residence at Atelier cneai, Paris. His latest collection, Hello From The American Desert [2007, Silver Wonder Press], contains poems from 2004-2007 which enlist internet spam as a springboard for poetry. Recent solo recordings include The Celestial Answer (with William Hooker) [2005, Table of the Elements]; Metal Box, with Text of Light [2006, Dirter]; and the forthcoming Maelstrom from Drift. [2008, Three-Lobed].
The BANG ON A CAN ALL-STARS have gained an international reputation for extreme virtuosity and an utterly unique sound, powered by their unusual combination of clarinet, electric guitar, cello, bass keyboards, and percussion. Freely crossing the boundaries between classical, jazz, rock, world and experimental music, the 6-member ensemble is constantly exploring new and innovative ways to present music.