Bang on a Can

BANG ON A CAN ALL-STARS with special guest LEE RANALDO
The 2009 People’s Commissioning Fund (PCF) Concert
Thursday, April 2, 2009 at 8pm

New York’s unparalleled electric chamber ensemble Bang on a Can All-Stars returns to Merkin for the 2009 People’s Commissioning Fund concert. Three world premieres commissioned by the people! The All-Stars premiere work 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 2nd part 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 with Lee Ranaldo of Sonic Youth.

The PCF is a radical partnership between artists and audiences to commission works from adventurous composers. For more info: www.bangonacan.org

A special edition of WNYC’s New Sounds® Live John Schaefer, host

*THE COMPOSERS: *

Dirty Projectors is the alias for singer/songwriter Dave Longstreth, who had debuted under his own name with the home-made The Graceful Fallen Mango (This Heart Plays Records, 2002). The lo-fi feeling was still prevalent on The Glad Fact (Western Vinyl, 2003), that ranged from the cacophonous overture to out-of-tune accompaniments to neoclassical ballads sung in operatic and punkish registers (Ground Underfoot, Glad Fact, Off Science Hill, My Offwhite Flag, Like Fake Blood in Crisp October), far away from the center of mass of lo-fi songwriters of the 1990s. Three Brown Finches, Proud of his vocal skills, Longstreth howled his compositions rather than whispering them. Facing up his inner ghosts, he let his voice waver and crack, rise and soar. After the Internet release Morning Better Last (States Rights, 2003), that collected unreleased material from three triple albums of 2001 and 2002, Slaves' Graves and Ballads (Western Vinyl, 2004), that collects the material of two prior EPs, refined the project by adding the arrangements of a ten-piece chamber orchestra (the Orchestral Society for the Preservation of the Orchestra) on a string of songs (particularly On the Beach, Hazard Lights, Grandfather's Hanging) that further enhanced the melodramatic quality of his performance. On the other hand, the second EP is basically the alter-ego of this ornate music, but ultimately it sticks to the same loud and neurotic persona. The spare Unmoved, Because Your Light Turns Green and Obscure Wisdom focus on his lyrical side, and complement the turbulent bard of the first half. All in all, Longstreth comes through as a hybrid being, like a cross between Andrew Bird and Sufjan Stevens, capable of vocal gymnastics that challege the dogmas of singing.

Kate Moore has been living and working as a composer in the Netherlands since August 2002 where she completed a Masters in music under Louis Andriessen. Moore has written for a vast array of ensembles including Syntonia, Orkest de Volharding, De Ereprijs Orkest, Ensemble Klang, Trio Kassandra, Is(BoaC MASSMoCA), The Song Company, Modelo62 and her own Very Big cello and double bass ensemble. She has embraced many curious experiences, including spending two weeks in the ocean building a floating sound sculpture collaborating with Australian sculptor Jade Oakley in connection with The Noosa Floating Land Festival. She has created interactive sound installations supported by the Foundation for Young Australians program, Bundanon Living Arts Space and the Australian National University, and has collaborated with the National Choreographic Centre based in the ACT. Her works have been performed in high profile festivals such as the International Gaudeamus Festival of Contemporary Music and Bang on a Can Summer festival MASSMoCA and in venues including The National Gallery of Australia, De Balie in Amsterdam and Theatre des Bouffes du Nord in Paris. She has received a number of awards for her creative work. In 2003 she was a prize winner at the Appeldoorn Young Composer Meeting and was 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 and during her undergraduate studies she was awarded an honours scholarship and The University Medal for excellence in Music.

Lok-Yin Tang is currently pursuing her Doctorate in Composition, studying with Prof. Wing-wah Chan and Prof. Victor Chan at the Chinese University of Hong Kong where she obtained a Masters in composition. She received her Bachelor of Music at the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts under the tutelage of Wing-fai Law and Clarence Mak. Tang’s has received numerous composition awards. In 2006, her Sheng Concerto “Volcanicity” won the Young Composer Award at the Singapore Chinese Orchestra’s International Competition for Chinese Orchestral Composition. In 2007, the chamber ensemble piece “The Giving Tree II” was awarded frist prize at the Asian Pacific Festival Young Composer Composition Competition in New Zealand. In 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 2007. In 2007, Tang received a Fulbright Scholarship be a visiting scholar at Columbia University, studying with Tristan Murail.

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].