Long Play 2022 – Archive

Steve Reich, Music for 18 Musicians

This is it!  Downtown New York experimental music’s first crossover hit.  When it premiered in 1976 it was immediately clear that it would turn our world around.  The music joyously links so many different communities – process music, jazz, ambient, and world music all have a home in this piece – you hear throughout how Reich honors and extends their influences. The Bang on a Can All-Stars premiere their own new and dramatic version of this classic work, joined by an ever-expanding community of New York luminary musicians.

Bang on a Can All-Stars play Ryuichi Sakamoto, 1996

Ryuichi Sakamoto “was arguably the best-known and most successful Japanese musician in the world.” (Peter Tasker, Nikkei Asia)  He won an Oscar for his soundtrack to Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Last Emperor and several Golden Globes and Grammy awards and nominations for other films. In 1992, he scored the opening ceremony of the Barcelona Olympics, conducting the orchestra while a billion people watched. Sakamoto’s film scores are renowned for their diversity and sensitivity, it is rare for a band to play this music live. and now the Bang on a Can All-Stars realize their own new live arrangements of the album 1996 (arranged by the All-Stars’ multi-talented clarinetist-composer Ken Thomson) — which includes an incredible selection of many of Sakamoto’s greatest hits – music from films including The Last Emperor, Wuthering Heights, The Sheltering Sky, Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence, and more. The Bang on a Can All-Stars play Ryuichi Sakamoto is an exploration, a tribute, a celebration.

Bang on a Can All-Stars website

Dither performs Laurie Spiegel’s The Expanding Universe

The intrepid electric guitar quartet Dither performs The Expanding Universe, the iconic 1979 album by the electronic composer and computer-music pioneer Laurie Spiegel. In 1977, one Spiegel composition, Kepler’s Harmony of the Worlds, was included on “The Sounds of Earth,” an LP compilation that accompanied the Voyager spacecraft as it traversed the solar system. Dither captains its concert voyage of The Expanding Universe with four electric guitars through a galaxy of live effects.

Dither’s website

Ekmeles performs George Lewis, Hannah Kendall, and Georg Friedrich Haas

New York experimental vocal sextet Ekmeles performs works by legendary composer and scholar George Lewis and increasingly acclaimed composer and storyteller Hannah Kendall that explore different aspects of the African-American diaspora. Lewis’s piece Lone Coast Anacrusis, for voices and accordion, gives voice to the peoples displaced and the communities shattered in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, based on Nathaniel Mackey’s poem of the same name. Hannah Kendall’s This Is But an Oration of Loss memorializes – hauntingly, delicately, passionately – a massacre of slaves on a ship in 1781. Ekmeles will also perform works by the highly sensitive and imaginative researcher into the inner world of sound, Georg Friedrich Haas.

Ekmeles performs David Lang’s the little match girl passion

the little match girl passion is Lang’s lush and tuneful mash up of Hans Christian Andersen and the Saint Matthew Passion, and it is as heartbreaking as it is uplifting.  The Guardian recently called this work a 21st century masterpiece – “one of the most original vocal works of recent times.”  Come see for yourself.

Ekmeles website

Éliane Radigue and Carol Robinson: OCCAM HEXA V, performed by Ensemble Klang 

Time stops in the  music of Éliane Radigue. She  not only has the ability to transport us but also to suspend us, as if in some kind of waking dream. OCCAM HEXA V is one of her most recently composed works, co-written with one of Radigue’s closest collaborators, the composer and clarinetist Carol Robinson, specifically for the Netherlands’ own Ensemble Klang.

photo by Vincent Pontet

Julia Wolfe’s Forbidden Love, performed by Sō Percussion

Forbidden Love – all the things you aren’t supposed to do to string instruments. Julia Wolfe’s string quartet for four percussionists is a creative collaboration conceived by none other than Sō Percussion, the ultimate can-do collective. Together, Wolfe and Sō share their beautiful, ethereal, and crunchy discoveries from this iconic quartet of instruments.

Julia’s website

photo credit: Peter Serling

Bassoonist Maya Stone performs “Bassoon Set” by Adolphus Hailstork.

Adolphus’ website

Aeryn Jade Santillan is a punk vocalist, guitarist, bassist, and creator of emo music. For Long Play, her music will be performed by electric guitar quartet Dither.  

Aeryn’s website

Amirtha’s website

photo by Peter Kerlin

Andy Akiho‘s ‘Seven Pillars’ will be performed by Sandbox Percussion

Described as “trailblazing” (LA Times) and “an imaginative composer” (NY Times), Andy Akiho is a GRAMMY® nominated composer and performer of new music. ​Recent engagements include commissioned premieres by the New York Philharmonic, National Symphony Orchestra, Shanghai Symphony, China Philharmonic, Guangzhou Symphony, Oregon Symphony with Soloist Colin Currie, American Composers Orchestra, Music@Menlo, Sandbox Percussion, Chamber Music Northwest, Carnegie Hall’s Ensemble Connect, LA Dance Project, and experimental opera company The Industry.Akiho has been recognized with many prestigious awards and organizations including the Rome Prize, Lili Boulanger Memorial Prize, Harvard University Fromm Commission, Barlow Endowment, New Music USA, and Chamber Music America. Additionally, his compositions have been featured on PBS’s “News Hour with Jim Lehrer” and by organizations such as Bang on a Can, American Composers Forum, The Intimacy of Creativity in Hong Kong, and the Heidelberg Festival.  His latest composition, Seven Pillars, performed by Sandbox Percussion, was nominated for 2 GRAMMY® Awards. ​Akiho is also an active steel pannist and performs his compositions with various ensembles worldwide. He has performed his works with the Charlotte Symphony, South Carolina Philharmonic, Nu Decco Ensemble, LA Philharmonic’s Green Umbrella Series, the Berlin Philharmonic’s Scharoun Ensemble, the International Drum Festival in Taiwan, and has had four concerts featuring his compositions at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC. Akiho’s recordings No One To Know One (innova Recordings) and The War Below (National Sawdust Tracks) features brilliantly crafted compositions that pose intricate rhythms and exotic timbres inspired by his primary instrument, the steel pan.   Akiho was born in 1979 in Columbia, SC, and is currently based in Portland, OR.

Andy’s website

photo by Da Ping Luo

Attaca Quartet performs the music of Anne Müller

Anthony Braxton: Bagpipe Compositions

“The Eddie Van Halen of the Bagpipes” writes Pop Matters. Matthew Welch has dedicated his life to expanding the repertoire for bagpipes and this concert will include his own works plus solo bagpipe music by pioneering composer Anthony Braxton.

Anthony’s website

Estonian composer Arvo Pärt’s music has been described as “holy minimalism” – simple, direct, unornamented, spiritually focused. Kanon Pokajanen – the Canon of Repentance – is his magnum opus and is performed here by The Choir of Trinity Wall Street, conducted by Julian Wachner.

Arvo’s website

photo by Eric Marinitsch

In 1959 Ornette Coleman turned the Jazz world on its head with the release of his controversial “The Shape Of Jazz To Come.” Was it music? Was he serious? Music so polarizing that fist fights broke out during his legendary debut at New York’s 5 Spot that year. Ornette Coleman went on to become a hero to many for boldy sticking to his beliefs. His concept of freedom from musical convention is still debated today. But not debated is that Ornette Coleman expanded the dimension of how music was heard after his arrival. This performance features newly arranged versions of the complete album, performed by the Denardo Coleman led “Ornette Expressions” featuring Jamaaladeen Tacuma, Jason Moran, Lee Odom, Wallace Roney Jr, and special guest James Blood Ulmer plus the Bang on a Can Orchestra, conducted by Awadagin Pratt. Contributing composers include Nick Dunston, Craig Harris, Nicole Mitchell, Carman Moore, David Sanford.

Awadagin’s website

photo by Rob Davidson

Ashley Bathgate: ASH

Supercellist Ashley Bathgate asked the six composers of the Sleeping Giant collective to write her solo works while channeling the spirit of Bach. Music by Timo Andres, Christopher Cerrone, Jacob Cooper, Ted Hearne, Robert Honsteinand Andrew Norman.

Ashley’s website

photo by Bill Wadman

Attaca Quartet

photo by David Goddard

This electronic band started in Puerto Rico but is now based in Brooklyn, mixing hypnotic tropical tunes and dembow beats and glitches and dreampop into their own style of music they call “dreambow.”

Balun’s website

photo by Felix De Portu

Banda de los Muertos

Brandon’s website

Brian Eno: Music for Airports

Brian Eno invented ambient music with his revolutionary 1978 studio album Music for Airports. Made of tape loops and electronic sounds, Eno never intended it to be performed live, but in 1998 the Bang on a Can All-Stars premiered their own live version and they have toured it around the globe ever since. This performance adds the live voices of The Choir of Trinity Wall Street, Julian Wachner, director.

Under the direction of their founder Dianne Berkun Menaker the Brooklyn Youth Chorus has become one of the most inspiring, ambitious, and polished ensembles in the city. For Long Play, they will perform music by Nathalie Joachim, Tania León, Paola Prestini, Olga Bell  and Gity Razaz.

Brooklyn Youth Chorus website

photo by Julie Cervantes

Bryce’s website

Carman Moore is a legend.  Composer, performer, conductor, author.  He was the music critic for the Village Voice in the early 1970s, when new music exploded in downtown New York, and we needed his smart, patient, public advocacy.  He has made a practice of using music to build bridges among people, faiths, and cultures.  For Long Play, he has arranged a section of Ornette Coleman’s  Shape of Jazz to Come, for the Denardo Coleman/Ornette Expressions Project.

Carman’s website

Attaca Quartet performs the music of Caroline Shaw

Caroline’s website

photo by Kait Moreno

The Choir of Trinity Wall Street perform Brian Eno’s Music for Airports and Arvo Pärt’s Kanon Pokajanen – the Canon of Repentance

Brian Eno invented ambient music with his revolutionary 1978 studio album Music for Airports. Made of tape loops and electronic sounds, Eno never intended it to be performed live, but in 1998 the Bang on a Can All-Stars premiered their own live version and they have toured it around the globe ever since. This performance adds the live voices of The Choir of Trinity Wall Street.

Estonian composer Arvo Pärt’s music has been described as “holy minimalism” – simple, direct, unornamented, spiritually focused. Kanon Pokajanen – the Canon of Repentance – is his magnum opus and is performed here by The Choir of Trinity Wall Street.

Choir of Trinity Wall Street website

photo by Leah Reddy

Quo Vadis presents Cienfuegos

Craig’s website

photo by Ozier Muhammad

For Long Play, the composer, educator, and band leader, David Sanford, has arranged a section of Ornette Coleman’s  Shape of Jazz to Come, for the Denardo Coleman/Ornette Expressions Project.

David’s website

photo by Joanna Chattman

Deforrest on Soundcloud

photo by tingding

Denardo Coleman / “Ornette Expressions”

In 1959 Ornette Coleman turned the Jazz world on its head with the release of his controversial “The Shape Of Jazz To Come.” Was it music? Was he serious? Music so polarizing that fist fights broke out during his legendary debut at New York’s 5 Spot that year. Ornette Coleman went on to become a hero to many for boldy sticking to his beliefs. His concept of freedom from musical convention is still debated today. But not debated is that Ornette Coleman expanded the dimension of how music was heard after his arrival. This performance features newly arranged versions of the complete album, performed by the Denardo Coleman led “Ornette Expressions” featuring Jamaaladeen Tacuma, Jason Moran, Lee Odom, Wallace Roney Jr, and special guest James Blood Ulmer plus the Bang on a Can Orchestra, conducted by Awadagin Pratt. Contributing composers include Nick Dunston, Craig Harris, Nicole Mitchell, Carman Moore, David Sanford.

Legendary soul singer Nona Hendryx (Labelle) teams up with original Beefheart guitarist Gary Lucas for a wild magical set of songs that spans the entire length and breadth of Don Van Vliet aka Captain Beefheart‘s groundbreaking catalog, from “Safe as Milk” through “Trout Mask Replica” and beyond.

eddy kwon is a composer, performer, singer, violinist.  She is a collaborator with musicians who cross all musical boundaries.  Kwon’s songs weave together quirky combinations of delicate word play and fierce fiddling.

eddy’s website

photo by Mengwen Cao

ETHEL’s website

photo by Matthew Murphy

Fay Victor encompasses a distinctive vocalizing, language and performing approach with the foundation of the jazz vocal idiom, now encompassing an “everything is everything” aesthetic bringing in references that span the globe.

Fay Victor’s Website

Attaca Quartet plays the music of Flying Lotus.

Flying Lotus website

Brooklyn Youth Chorus performs the music of Gity Razaz

Gity’s website

photo by Ronald Andrew Schvartzman

The reclusive Soviet-era legend Galina Ustvolskaya wrote six mystical and granitic piano sonatas, spanning 43 years of her life.  At LONG PLAY, piano virtuosa Jenny Lin will play a selection of Sonatas and Preludes.

I-R is the innovative tech duo I-VT and Retcon (Adam Cuthbert and Daniel Rhode)

Adam Cuthbert

Daniel Rhode

photo by Dan Rhode

Infinity Shred website

photo by Brian Vu

Brooklyn’s Innov Gnawa explores Mococco’s venerable gnawa music tradition.

Innov Gnawa’s website

inti’s website

photo by ella joklik

Cellist Iva Casian-Lakos is known for both her virtuosity and interdisciplinary versatility from classical cello to boundary-stretching new works, involving choreography, singing, acting, improvisation, and more. Composer Joan La Barbara puts her unique skills to work with a new piece, ad astra…for cellist who sings, for Iva to perform on cello and voice.

Iva’s website

photo by Emma Albuquerque

Jamaaladeen’s website

photo by Sound Evidence

In 1959 Ornette Coleman turned the Jazz world on its head with the release of his controversial “The Shape Of Jazz To Come.” Was it music? Was he serious? Music so polarizing that fist fights broke out during his legendary debut at New York’s 5 Spot that year. Ornette Coleman went on to become a hero to many for boldy sticking to his beliefs. His concept of freedom from musical convention is still debated today. But not debated is that Ornette Coleman expanded the dimension of how music was heard after his arrival. This performance features newly arranged versions of the complete album, performed by the Denardo Coleman led “Ornette Expressions” featuring Jamaaladeen Tacuma, Jason Moran, Lee Odom, Wallace Roney Jr, and special guest James Blood Ulmer plus the Bang on a Can Orchestra, conducted by Awadagin Pratt. Contributing composers include Nick Dunston, Craig Harris, Nicole Mitchell, Carman Moore, David Sanford.

photo by by Robert Feichtenschlager

Titus Underwood (oboe) performs the music of James Lee III

James’ website

James Moore and Alicia Hall Moran perform Send Back My Love, Songs after Duke Ellington’s Solitude.

James’ website

Alicia’s website

photo of James by Reuben Radding

photo of Alicia by Leigh Webber

For Long Play, Jason performs with the Denardo Coleman/Ornette Expressions ensemble and the Ornette Coleman “Shape of Jazz to Come” project.

Jason’s website

photo by Ari Marcopoulos 

Jeff’s website

photo by Peter Kerlin

JG Thirlwell website

photo by Marylene Mey

Joan La Barbara is an icon of the experimental music world.  Her original experiment was her own voice, expanding her range to explore multiphonics, ululation, the subtleties of her own breath.  She turns her experimental spirit towards all the music she makes, including her new work, ad astra…for cellist who sings, for cellist Iva Casian-Lakos.

Joan’s website

photo by Toni Higgins

John Luther Adams: Strange and Sacred Noise

John Luther Adams’ radical vision is to use music to describe how we live in the world, in particular how nature changes us, and how we change it, combining a rugged sense of the elemental with a real concern for the health of the earth. At LONG PLAY, his monumental cycle is performed by Left Edge Percussion and the Southern Oregon University Percussion Ensemble.

John’s website

The reclusive Soviet-era legend Galina Ustvolskaya wrote six mystical and granitic piano sonatas, spanning 43 years of her life.  At LONG PLAY, piano virtuosa Jenny Lin will play a selection of from Sonatas and Preludes.

Jenny’s website

photo by Liz Linder

Kendall Williams: Pan in Motion

Steel pans were originally made out of empty oil drums discarded around the Caribbean. Steel pan guru Kendall Williams has assembled a massive orchestra of different sized pans, and his hypnotically unpredictable and rhythmically ecstatic tunes push this traditional instrument into the future.

Kendall’s website

Composer / guitarist Kaki King plays her instrument like none other. Her performances are an explosion of percussive plucking and ambidextrous tapping, somehow managing to send melodies and countermelodies and rhythms and counter-rhythms flying all over the instrument, at once.

Kaki’s website

photo by Ebru Yildiz

Vocal ensemble Ekmeles performs Karlheinz Stockhausen‘s  Stimmung.

karlheinzstockhausen.org

BOMB Magazine and Bang on a Can present a series of artist-driven conversations live at The Center for Fiction. Bringing together artists from different disciplines with unique approaches to artistry, this conversation series centers the artmaking process and invites us to explore new ways of finding common ground. This talk brings together musician/composer Khyam Allami and theorist, journalist, curator, and musician DeForrest Brown, Jr. (Speaker Music).

Kyam Allami’s website

Chicago’s ~Nois Saxophone Quartet squawks, honks and blasts its way through music by members of the international composer collective Kinds of Kings –Maria Kaoutzani, Gemma Peacocke, and Shelley Washington.

Kinds of Kings website

Improvising duo Kris Davis (piano) and Dave Holland (bass) are free, intense, relentless, volcanic.

Kris’ website

Dave’s website

photo of Kris by Mardock

Rumba de la MUSA is a diasporic collective of artists who gather around the voice of the Caribbean drum encompassing members from Cuba, Puerto Rico, Chile, Panama, Colombia, and the US. La Rumba de la Musa is a multi-generational group of musicians, composed of long-standing pillars of the NYC Rumba scene as well a young group of rising stars.

Rumba de la Musa performs traditional Afro-Cuban Rumba, a musical form with roots in the African and European musical traditions that coalesced in Cuba sometime around the end of the 19th century. Rumba is interpreted by a lead singer and a chorus of voices that engage in call-and-response singing. They are accompanied by three conga drums and various percussion that play intricate, polyrhythmic parts. Though there are strict rules that govern the structure of Rumba, it is a highly improvisatory and nuanced musical form in which the singers, drummers, and dancers co-create each musical moment.

John Luther Adams’ radical vision is to use music to describe how we live in the world, in particular how nature changes us, and how we change it, combining a rugged sense of the elemental with a real concern for the health of the earth. At LONG PLAY, his monumental cycle Strange and Sacred Noise is performed by Left Edge Percussion and the Southern Oregon University Percussion Ensemble.

Left Edge Percussion

photo by Tatjana Luce

Leila’s website

photo by Rodrigo Vazquez

About Louis Cole

Michael Gordon is a master of the elemental, building massive structures out of simple materials. Timber, performed here by Mantra Percussion, is a tour de force of focus and power – six percussionists each play an ordinary wooden 2×4, gradually adding beat upon beat until they swirl into psychedelic clouds of sound.

Mantra Percussion’s website

photo by Ian Douglas

Marcus’ website

Baltimore’s conceptual electronica artists make beats out of an astonishing array of source materials – cutting hair, the amplified nerve fibers of crustaceans, smashing old LPs. It is a strange kind of alchemy that Matmos can transform all these different and sometimes terrifying sources into cheerful techno beats.

Matmos on Bandcamp

“The Eddie Van Halen of the Bagpipes” writes Pop Matters. Matthew Welch has dedicated his life to expanding the repertoire for bagpipes and this concert will include his own works plus solo bagpipe music by pioneering composer Anthony Braxton.

Matthew’s website

photo by David Welch

There probably isn’t an orchestra in the world that hasn’t played a piece by Michael Daugherty.  Known for his ear, his wit and his imagination of how instruments work together, he turns all his skills towards his recent composition, Six Riffs after Ovid, for oboe superstar Titus Underwood.

Michael’s website

photo by Yopie Prins

Michael Pisaro: Ricefall

Rice falls, like a gentle rain, from the hands of the performers, onto a variety of objects and surfaces. Ricefall is part sonic environment, part visual installation, part intensely quiet and dramatic performance. Performed by the Southern Oregon University Percussion Ensemble.

Michael’s website

photo by Chiyoko Slavnics

Pianist Michael Riesman plays Philip Glass Etudes and soundtrack arrangements.

Michael’s website

photo by Eli Reed

Composer Molly Herron makes music that often begins in the place of questioning things we take for granted in Western classical instruments.  What could be a better example of something we take for granted than the bassoon?  In this piece we will find out, through the performance of Canon No. 4 by bassoonist Maya Stone.

Molly’s website

photo by Catalina Kulczar

Nate Wooley performs OCCAM X  by revolutionary French synth goddess Éliane Radigue. Nate’s music will also be performed on Long Play by experimental electric guitar quartet Dither.

Nate’s website

photo by Frank Schemmann

Brooklyn Youth Chorus performs the music of Nathalie Joachim

Nathalie’s website

photo by Josué Azor

Composer and bassist Nick Dunston is an up and comer on the avant performance scene in New York, performing non-stop with a who’s who of downtown alternative performance royalty.

Nick’s website

photo by Una Stade

Composer, post-jazz afro-futurist and flutist Nicole Mitchell knows how to keep us guessing. Gentle grooves and beautiful tunes? Wild, edgy, flowing textures? She does it all.

Nicole’s website

Chicago’s ~Nois Saxophone Quartet squawks, honks and blasts its way through music by members of the international composer collective Kinds of Kings –Maria Kaoutzani, Gemma Peacocke, and Shelley Washington.

~Nois website

Legendary soul singer Nona Hendryx (Labelle) teams up with original Beefheart guitarist Gary Lucas for a wild magical set of songs that spans the entire length and breadth of Captain Beefheart’s groundbreaking catalog, from “Safe as Milk” through “Trout Mask Replica” and beyond.

photo by Michael Del Sol

Brooklyn Youth Chorus performs the music of Olga Bell

Olga’s website

Pamela Z: half composer, half performer, half machine!  Pioneering composer-singer Pamela Z will perform a solo set of her own miraculous combination of operatic bel canto and live digital looping.

She is also a contributing composer for the performance of Denardo Coleman / “Ornette Expressions”:

In 1959 Ornette Coleman turned the Jazz world on its head with the release of his controversial “The Shape Of Jazz To Come.” Was it music? Was he serious? Music so polarizing that fist fights broke out during his legendary debut at New York’s 5 Spot that year. Ornette Coleman went on to become a hero to many for boldy sticking to his beliefs. His concept of freedom from musical convention is still debated today. But not debated is that Ornette Coleman expanded the dimension of how music was heard after his arrival. This performance features newly arranged versions of the complete album, performed by the Denardo Coleman led “Ornette Expressions” featuring Jamaaladeen Tacuma, Jason Moran, Lee Odom, Wallace Roney Jr, and special guest James Blood Ulmer plus the Bang on a Can Orchestra, conducted by Awadagin Pratt. Contributing composers include Nick Dunston, Craig Harris, Nicole Mitchell, Carman Moore, David Sanford and Pamela Z.

Pamela’s website

photo by Donald Swearingen

Brooklyn Youth Chorus performs the music of Paola Prestini

Paola’s website

photo by Marco Valentin

Kendall Williams: Pan in Motion

Steel pans were originally made out of empty oil drums discarded around the Caribbean. Steel pan guru Kendall Williams has assembled a massive orchestra of different sized pans, and his hypnotically unpredictable and rhythmically ecstatic tunes push this traditional instrument into the future.

Pan in Motion website

photo by Stephanie Berger

Attaca Quartet and Michael Riesman perform the music of Philip Glass

Philip’s website

photo by Danny Clinch

Phong’s website

Quo Vadis Presents: Russell E.L. Butler, Cienfuegos, Via App

Quo Vadis Productions website

Reggie Workman & Andrew Cyrille + Special Guest Marc Cary

Reggie Workman website

Andrew Cyrille website

David Virelles website

photo of Reggie by Richard Conde

photo of Andrew by Jack Tartoogian

In 1984 the experimental composer Robert Ashley’s masterpiece Perfect Lives premiered as a seven-part television opera.   Ashley’s approach to opera was revolutionary – ordinary people whose everyday language hints at the eternal, “sung” in a kind of incantatory murmur, over elemental chords and structures.   On Long Play, Matmos performs “The Backyard” from Perfect Lives.

Quo Vadis presents Russell E.L. Butler

Russell’s website

Sandbox Percussion performs ‘Seven Pillars’ by Andy Akiho

Stage direction and Lighting Design by Michael Joseph McQuilken

Described as “exhilarating” by The New York Times, and “utterly mesmerizing” by The Guardian, GRAMMY®-nominated ensemble Sandbox Percussion has established themselves as a leading proponent of contemporary percussion chamber music. Brought together by the simple joy of playing together, Sandbox Percussion captivates audiences with performances that are both visually and aurally stunning. Through compelling collaborations with composers and performers, Jonathan Allen, Victor Caccese, Ian Rosenbaum, and Terry Sweeney seek to engage a wider audience for classical music.

Sandbox Percussion’s 2021 album Seven Pillars was nominated for two GRAMMY® awards. This evening-length work by Andy Akiho with stage direction and lighting design by Michael Joseph McQuilken is Sandbox’s largest commission to date.

In addition to the world premiere of Seven Pillars at Emerald City Music in Seattle, the 2021/2022 season includes many highlights – Sandbox Percussion will perform concertos with the Albany Symphony and UMKC Conservatory Orchestra, travel to Northern Ireland, Lithuania and many cities across the United States, perform at the Percussive Arts Society International Convention, and premiere new works by David Crowell, Molly Joyce, Loren Loiacono, Jessica Meyer, Tawnie Olson, and Tyshawn Sorey.

Sandbox was appointed ensemble-in-residence and percussion faculty at the University of Missouri-Kansas City in 2021, has led masterclasses and coachings all around the United States, and in 2016, founded the annual NYU Sandbox Percussion Seminar.

Sandbox Percussion endorses Pearl/Adams musical instruments, Zildjian cymbals, Vic Firth sticks and mallets, Remo drumheads, and Black Swamp accessories.

Sandbox Percussion website

Sasha Waltz and Guests and the Bang on a Can All-Stars perform Terry Riley “In C”

Choreographer Sasha Waltz takes up the challenge—and the open-ended possibilities—in this playful, expressive new work, accompanied live by the electric Bang on a Can All-Stars. Waltz builds on her interdisciplinary practice to create an adaptable movement system inspired by Riley’s score.

Sasha Waltz and Guests website

Shara Nova (aka My Brightest Diamond) sings David Lang’s Schubert-inspired death speaks.

Shara’s website

photo by Shervin Lainez

Supercellist Ashley Bathgate asked the six composers of the Sleeping Giant collective to write her solo works while channeling the spirit of Bach. Music by Timo Andres, Christopher Cerrone, Jacob Cooper, Ted Hearne, Robert Honstein and Andrew Norman.

photo by Hillit Zwick

Composer/performer Soo Yeon Lyuh brings her musical virtuosity and deep knowledge of traditional Korean music into the 21st century, and beyond, with her unbelievable mastery of the haegum, the Korean 2 string spike fiddle.

Soo Yeon’s website

photo by Seung Yull Nah

Southern Oregon University Percussion Ensemble perform John Luther Adams’ Strange and Sacred Noise and Michael Pisaro’s Ricefall

John Luther Adams: Strange and Sacred Noise

John Luther Adams’ radical vision is to use music to describe how we live in the world, in particular how nature changes us, and how we change it, combining a rugged sense of the elemental with a real concern for the health of the earth. At LONG PLAY, his monumental cycle is performed by Left Edge Percussion and the Southern Oregon University Percussion Ensemble.

Michael Pisaro: Ricefall

Rice falls, like a gentle rain, from the hands of the performers, onto a variety of objects and surfaces. Ricefall is part sonic environment, part visual installation, part intensely quiet and dramatic performance. Performed by the Southern Oregon University Percussion Ensemble.

SOU Percussion Ensemble website

photo by Kim Budd

Jazz legend Sun Ra’s music is a wild collision between mind-blowing sound experiments and national anthems from outer space. For the last 27 years the band has been led by Sun Ra’s longtime collaborator Marshall Allen, now 97 years young.

Sun Ra Arkestra’s website

TAK Ensemble

Bassoonist Maya Stone performs Tilt, by Tonia Ko.

Tonia’s website

photo by Kaupo Kikkas

Brooklyn Youth Chorus performs the music of Tania León.

Tania’s website

Titus Underwood, principal oboe of the Nashville Symphony, is on a mission to open your ears and mind to what the oboe can do.

Titus’s website

photo by YNOT Images

Tristan Perich is a composer, an inventor, a technologist and a visual artist, and all of these parts of his persona come together in his music.

Tristan’s website

Quo Vadis presents Via App

Vijay Iyer – Linda May Han Oh – Tyshawn Sorey

Vijay’s website

Linda’s website

Tyshawn’s website

photo by Craig Marsden

For Long Play, Wallace performs with the Denardo Coleman/Ornette Expressions ensemble and the Ornette Coleman “Shape of Jazz to Come” project.

Cellist and composer Zoë Keating, with the use of computers and machines, constructs her compositions in front of us, in real time, while we watch. Musical snippets become captured by the technology and added to each other, in layers, transforming simple, straightforward fragments of solo cello lines into giant, orchestral forms.

Zoë’s website

photo by Chase Jarvis

Based in both Troy, NY and Nashville, TN, bassoonist Maya Stone is a woodwind wonder woman. A lifelong advocate for new works, she has commissioned and premiered new solo works for bassoon ranging from contemporary, classical, gospel, and the in-between. She will be performing Canon no. 4 by Molly Herron. She is also a member of the Bang on a Can Orchestra performing “Ornette Expressions/Shape of Jazz to Come” on Long Play.