Bang on a Can

Monday, April 7, 2008. Composer David Lang was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in Music for his work The Little Match Girl Passion, based on the Hans Christian Andersen fable “The Little Match Girl," commissioned by Carnegie Hall for the vocal ensemble Theatre of Voices and its director, Paul Hillier.

David is a world-renowned composer as well as Co-Founder and Co-Artistic Director of the New York music collective, Bang on a Can.

His music has been performed by amongst others, the New York Philharmonic, the Santa Fe Opera, the San Francisco Symphony, The Cleveland Orchestra, and the Kronos Quartet; as well as at the Next Wave Festival at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, at the Tanglewood music festival, the BBC Proms, The Munich Biennale, the Settembre Musica Festival, the Sidney 2000 Olympic Arts Festival and the Almeida, Holland, Berlin and Strasbourg Festivals; and in the choreography of Edouard Lock and La La La Human Steps, Twyla Tharp, the Paris Opera Ballet, The Nederlands Dans Theater and the Royal Ballet.

In addition to Little Match Girl Passion, for which he is receiving the Pulitzer Prize, David Lang’s recent projects include monumental musical environments like the dark and meditative amplified orchestra piece The Passing Measures; Writing on Water for the London Sinfonietta, with visuals by English filmmaker Peter Greenaway; Shelter for trio medaeival and musikFabrik, with co-composers Michael Gordon and Julia Wolfe; The Difficulty of Crossing a Field - an opera for the Kronos Quartet; Grind to a Halt for the San Francisco Symphony; World to Come, a commission for cellist Maya Beiser from Carnegie Hall, and loud love songs, a concerto for the percussionist Evelyn Glennie and orchestra. He is working on an upcoming collaboration with visual artist Mark Dion and Ridge Theater Company on an opera, entitled Anatomy Theater.

Lang's most recent album, ELEVATED (Cantaloupe), includes a DVD of his collaborations with visual artists William Wegman, Bill Morrison and Matt Mullican. His recording of THE PASSING MEASURES (Cantaloupe) was named one of the best CD's of 2001 by The New Yorker magazine. Other CDs include the introspective chamber work CHILD (Cantaloupe) and other works on Sony Classical, BMG, Point, Chandos, Argo/Decca, Caprice, CRI and Cantaloupe labels.