David Lang’s before and after nature
David Lang, words and music
Tal Rosner, video and visual design
World Premiere performance by the Bang on a Can All-Stars and LA Master Chorale, conducted by Grant Gershon
When David Lang (a Stanford alum) set out to write a new composition for the Bang on a Can All-Stars, he looked to his alma mater for inspiration. Commissioned by Stanford Live specifically to bring Lang and the All-Stars back to campus, before and after nature is a meditation on the natural world, both before human existence and after humans are gone.
Lang met closely with scholars, faculty and students in Stanford’s Doerr School of Sustainability, and with the Doerr-affiliated Environmental Justice Working Group. He combined what he learned with his own readings from the past 50 years of environmental thinking, writing his own texts that explore the different ways we define and understand nature, now that it has been forever changed by our behavior. He set these texts for voices and the All-Stars and he enlisted video pioneer Tal Rosner to invent a way to visualize the meanings of the music in video and projection. The result is an immersive spectacle of sound and vision, both heartbreaking and miraculous, full of beauty, wonder and awe.
Bang on a Can All-Stars
- Lizzie Burns – bass
- Vicky Chow – piano
- David Cossin – percussion
- Arlen Hlusko – cello
- Taylor Levine – guitar
- Ken Thomson – clarinet, bass clarinet, saxophone
- Andrew Cotton – sound engineer
before and after nature was commissioned by Bang on a Can; Stanford Live; Los Angeles Master Chorale; Helsinki Festival and Helsinki Chamber Choir; University of Illinois-Krannert Center for the Performing Arts; with generous support from Robert and Maria A. Skirnick, Stephen Block, Leslie Lassiter, Raulee Marcus, Susan and George Reardon, Elizabeth and Justus Schlichting, Abby Sher.