Bang on a Can

For more than twenty years I have enjoyed a strong friendship with the Bang on a Can All-Stars and the Bang on a Can composers. Since then, the All-Stars have played the pieces of mine that are more or less suited for their instrumentation, and they have done so with brilliance and with so much commitment that I have walked around at least ten years with the intention to compose especially for them. However, it took a long time to find a solution, because I found the combination of their instruments rather difficult: 19th century strings with contemporary instruments like guitar and percussion. I found a way when I decided to see this instrumentation as an advantage, and I was supported by a plan with the video artist Marijke van Warmerdam. We decided to make a kind of contemporary “Pictures of an Exhibition”: short pieces of music to accompany video clips. This resulted in Life -- four short compositions which come from late romantic ‘European’ music with hip ‘American’ repetitive music. This combination is stretched by the use of cross-references, parallel with what happens in the four films: every film is completely independent, but contains allusions to the others.

-Louis Andriessen