News

“Long Play has been around only since last year, but it is already the most important classical music festival in New York City.” [NYTimes]

We are so excited to present the 3rd year of Long Play, a three-day destination music festival, presented from Friday, May 3 through Sunday, May 5, 2024. Featuring 50+ concerts , Long Play also showcases a dense network of inventive music venues in Brooklyn – with performances at BAM (Brooklyn Academy of Music), Roulette, Public Records, BRIC, Murmrr, Irondale Center for the Arts, The Center for Fiction, plus outdoor events and more. A limited number of 3-day Early Bird Festival and Supporter Passes are on sale now at www.longplayfestival.org!

Some featured concerts in the 2024 lineup include Soundwalk Collective + Patti Smith, Jeff Mills’ Tomorrow Comes the Harvest, Steve Reich’s master-work Music for 18 Musicians, Deerhoof, BlankFor.ms + Jason Moran, Anna Meredith + Ligeti Quartet, Raw Poetic and Damu the Fudgemunk, Bang on a Can All-Stars performing Ryuichi Sakamoto 1996, and many others.

Bang on a Can’s Co-Founders and Artistic Directors Michael Gordon, David Lang, and Julia Wolfe, say of Long Play:

We don’t know about you, but personally, ourselves, we need to listen to a lot more music.  Right now.  People are tense, the world is a mess.  We need music’s healing powers, stat.  And just as much as the music, we need the community of people around the music – the performers, the composers, the people who come together to hear it all, the people who take the tickets and sell the beer and sweep up after.  We need the whole thing, all of us, the whole universe of music lovers who share the same belief – that music has the power to make us whole.  Because it does.

Lucky for us, this year’s LONG PLAY festival is overflowing with all different kinds of music and musicians – music that is loud and soft, music that is driving and meditative, music that is for winding up and for winding down.  Music that challenges where we have come from and that charts where we are headed.  60 plus concerts of all of this great music, in one long weekend, in multiple venues in Brooklyn, all within walking distance of each other.   Come see it all, on LONG PLAY.

More info and tickets

Get the most out of Long Play festival’s Saturday lineup with a 1-day pass—on sale now!

A 1-day pass for May 4 gives you access to the thrumming sonic bliss of Jeff Mills: Tomorrow Comes the Harvest at the BAM Howard Gilman Opera House—and more than 25 other concerts, including performances by BlankFor.ms, Jason Moran, Marcus Gilmore; Immanuel Wilkins + Jason Moran; Ligeti Quartet • Anna Meredith: Nuc; Mivos Quartet with the complete string quartets of Steve Reich; Fuji|||||||||||ta, Ekmeles performs David Lang’s the little match girl passion, Sō Percussion playing Julia Wolfe, and more!

Get your Saturday Pass now.

See the full Long Play lineup.

Bang on a Can Media Workshop at MASS MoCA

An exploration of contemporary music criticism
and journalism

July 27-Aug 4, 2024

“One of the most meaningful and impactful experiences of my writing career
thus far.”  – Maggie Molloy, workshop participant

Bang on a Can, our special guest faculty John Schaefer and Terrance McKnight, and 6 writers in the early stages of their careers will gather at MASS MoCA (the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, North Adams, MA) to explore the role of criticism and journalism in today’s dynamic contemporary music scene.

The aim of the workshop is to help writers generate a vocabulary, syntax, and context that is most useful for readers/ listeners and to make modern music and criticism more accessible, welcoming, and exciting to all audiences.

The workshop will take place during the final week of the Bang on a Can Summer Music Festival at MASS MoCA (a residency and festival for composers and performers) and will include daily meetings with faculty and daily writing assignments. Additionally, participants will be “embedded” in the festival activities, attending rehearsals, workshops, and performances, enabling more insights into the process of bringing music to the stage.

Application deadline is April 4, 2024

More info and online applications

Get the most out of Long Play’s Sunday lineup with a 1-day pass—on sale now! A 1-day pass for May 5 gives you access to Steve Reich: Music for 18 Musicians Featuring Bang on a Can All-Stars and Friends at the BAM Howard Gilman Opera House—and more than 25 other concerts including performances by Deerhoof; Sam Prekop and John McEntire; Laurel Halo; claire rousay; Michael Gordon Rushes; Kuniko Kato plays Steve Reich Drumming; Rob Mazurek/Chad Taylor – Chicago Underground Duo; and others at venues throughout downtown Brooklyn.

Get your Sunday pass now.

See the full Long Play lineup.

Over the course of 2 consecutive weekends (April 14 & 21), composer Michael Gordon and Mantra Percussion present 6 unique concerts performing Gordon’s epic, hour-long percussion sextet Timber (performed on planks of wood) across Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens in unseen reverberant places that thousands of people pass by without ever thinking about.

See the Resonant Spaces schedule here!

At the same time that artists such as Marta Minujín and her New York Pop Art contemporaries were challenging the art establishment of the 1960s, there were also composers using ideas from popular culture to take on the institutions of serious music. With “Bang on a Can All-Stars Play Philip Glass,” a program including Glass’s iconic late 1960s works Music in 5ths and Two Pages, the All-Stars play music that reflects the time and ideals of Pop Art—experimental versus classical, high versus low—the time Minujín first broke into New York and ideals that remain evident in her work today.

This event is presented in conjunction with the current Jewish Museum exhibition Marta Minujín: Arte! Arte! Arte!

Learn More

Bang on a Can Summer Music Festival at MASS MoCA

A new music utopia for composers and performers

July 15-Aug 4, 2024

Applications are online now! 

The Bang on a Can Summer Music Festival at MASS MoCA (the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art) is a 3-week musical utopia for innovative composers and performers in the beautiful Berkshire mountains of western Massachusetts dedicated entirely to adventurous contemporary music. Composers will have their new works performed. Players will perform in ensembles alongside our faculty. The program includes daily performances in the museum galleries, and concludes with a three-day blow-out festival performed by fellows, faculty, and special guests. In the words of previous participants this program is“…one of the most important artistic events in my whole career.” and “life changing.” The program also features African and Latin music workshops, electronics and music business seminars, free events  in the community, and more.

More info and applications

Support the recording of Jeffrey Brooks’ Memory Palace!  Premiered at Bang on a Can’s 2023 LOUD Weekend at MASS MoCA, Brooks’ latest work features his own invention, the stein-o-caster.  Jeffrey Brooks is an American composer living in Minneapolis, MN.  He was the Artistic Director at the American Composers Forum and the NPR show Composers Voice.  A long-time collaborator of Bang on a Can, we are looking forward to releasing his latest album on Cantaloupe Records.

Click here to view the premiere of Memory Palace and make a donation in support of Jeff’s music!

https://bangonacan.org/brooksrecording/

The Jewish Museum and Bang on a Can present a concert celebrating the works of Layla and Mounir Mourad, the Egyptian Jewish musical legends. Layla Mourad was one of the most important singers during the golden age of Arabic music and prolific composers for Arabic language film in the mid-1900s. Her music remains popular and influential across the Middle East to this day. Mourad, who came from a notable musical family, sang and starred in some of the most classic and celebrated films in Egyptian history. Her brother, Mounir Mourad was also a renowned actor and composer whose music, featured in this program, incorporated a modern, jazzy sound along with a conservative Arabic rhythm. This concert honors their lives, legacies and their family’s important contribution to Egyptian music along with their continued impact on the music scene in Cairo.

For this concert, Layla and Mounir Morad’s music has been arranged by Yousha Mourad, an Egyptian-American Jewish composer and vocalist. His goal is to continue the legacy of Layla, Zaki, and Mounir Mourad through his modern compositions in the Arabic language based on the Maqam/rhythmic approach used in the Mourad family’s music. This event is presented in conjunction with the current Jewish Museum exhibition Mood of the moment: Gaby Aghion and the house of Chloé.

Featuring:
Yousha Mourad: Vocals/Oud
Ismail Lumanovski: Clarinet
Safran Mansi: Percussion
Dayramir González: Piano
Michael Olatuja: Bass
Tamer Pinarbasi: Qanun

Thursday, November 9, 2023
7:30 – 9 pm EST
Scheuer Auditorium

Tickets: $22 General; $15 Students and Seniors; $12 Jewish Museum members

More info and tickets

Includes Museum Admission; doors open at 7 pm

The Bang on A Can All-Stars join Kronos Quartet in their Five Decade Celebration!!

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KRONOS Five Decades is presented November 3 at Carnegie Hall – and it features Laurie Anderson, Bang on a Can All-Stars, Jake Blount, Tanya Tagaq, Wu Man, Attacca Quartet, Sō Percussion, and others.

This special concert includes a new short film by award-winning documentarian Sam Green; the New York premieres of Carnegie Hall co-commissioned works by Michael Gordon and Gabriella Smith; and an extraordinary new “Sunrise Jam” version of Terry Riley’s Sunrise of the Planetary Dream Collector for 50 musicians.

Bang on a Can is honored to have presented the first concert of Kronos’s Five Decade season at 2023 LOUD Weekend at MASS MoCA!