Big Ears Festival is back in 2022! It’s all happening March 24-27 in Knoxville, TN. Bang on a Can All-Stars will perform “Memory Games” with Meredith Monk, and will also perform Terry Riley’s “Autodreamographical Tales.” The full line up is outstanding, and we can’t wait to see you there!
Applications for the Bang on a Can Summer Music Festival are online now!
Application deadline: Tuesday, January 11, 2022
Festival dates: July 11-Aug 1, 2022
“A 3-week utopia for composers and performers”
In just one year, we were able to broadcast more than 145 performances, during EIGHT Online Bang on a Can Marathons. And there’s more to come!
Among these stunning displays of radical creativity you’ll find 70 world premiere commissions, dozens more exclusive, unique performances from today’s most brilliant players and makers, plus conversations with the artists.
Here, for the first time, we have collected and edited nearly all these concerts and conversations in one place, for all the world to experience. Enjoy!
We are grateful that so many people have helped us make these performances possible. You can too – please consider a gift to help us continue our work: to present and commission the very most exciting new music from wherever it may be found.
First Fridays with Robert Black
Livestream – November 5, 2021 at 12 noon ET
live.bangonacan.org
PROGRAM -“Bass Players for Black Composers (Collective)”
Yaz Lancaster – Wind_Down_2 (2020)
Mason Bynes – The [WRECK}oning (2020)
Nick Dunston – Mulch Awareness Month (2020)
Joy Guidry – In My Bed (2020)
This month, First Fridays with Robert Black will delve deep into the collective “Bass Players for Black Composers.” This new organization is on a mission to connect talented, black composers with new performers and audiences. We’re going to hear cool grooves, ambient beauty, quirky energy, joyful sonics, delightful double bass doings, and more from Yaz Lancaster, Nick Dunston, Mason Bynes, and Joy Guidry.
First Fridays with Robert Black is a monthly series of virtual mini-concerts featuring brand-spanking new, recently new, and kind of new music for solo double bass – streaming from his home studio in Hartford, Connecticut, at noon (EST). Whether you’re having your morning coffee in Los Angeles, or lunch in New York, or that first glass of wine in Paris, or a late supper in Tashkent, tune in for some cool and compelling music.
This is a free concert! But please consider purchasing a ticket just the same. Doing so will help us to do more performances, pay more players, commission more composers, and share more music worldwide.
On Friday, October 22, 2021 at 6:30pm, Bang on a Can and The Noguchi Museum present Lee Ranaldo who will give a special performance of his Hurricane Transcriptions with electric guitar quartet Dither and drummer Brian Chase. Ranaldo says, “This piece has its origin on the day in October 2012 when Hurricane Sandy struck New York City. I noticed the strong winds were creating strange acoustic effects, which sounded like demented choirs, dense tonal clusters and harmonies, both consonant and dissonant. The gale was playing the city buildings like a giant Aeolian harp! I grabbed my portable digital recorder, suited up and went out into the storm to collect these sounds. As I walked the streets in my neighborhood the sounds shifted on every corner. I recorded what I could. Over the following week, with New York’s power grid a casualty of the storm, I transcribed what I heard and from these sonic impressions I built the piece, initially for a European orchestra, now realized for the current ensemble.”
The performance will take place in The Noguchi Museum’s first floor gallery, with only 30 public tickets available. Tickets are $10 (the same price as museum admission) and allow patrons access to the galleries and garden after hours. Doors open at 6:15pm and the performance runs from 6:30pm–7:30pm. Masks and proof of vaccination are required. More information is available at 718.204.7088 or www.noguchi.org/bangonacan. The Noguchi Museum is located at 9-01 33rd Road (at Vernon Boulevard), Long Island City, NY.
First Fridays with Robert Black
October 1, 2021 at 12 noon ET
PROGRAM: “20th Century Giants”
John Cage – 59 1/2” (1953)
Elliott Carter – Figment III (2007)
Giacinto Scelsi – Mantram (undated)
Iannis Xenakis – Theraps (1976)
We’re back with Season 2 of First Fridays with Robert Black! This month’s program brings you “classic” pieces from some of the 20th Century’s major composers: John Cage’s minute-long piece jammed packed with squawks, squeaks, thumps, bumps and plenty of silence, the intense and dense lyricism of Elliott Carter, Giacinto Scelsi’s eastern tinged melismatic mantra, and a mind-boggling, Herculean epic from Iannis Xenakis.
First Fridays with Robert Black is a monthly series of virtual mini-concerts featuring brand-spanking new, recently new, and kind of new music for solo double bass – streaming from his home studio in Hartford, Connecticut, at noon (EST). Whether you’re having your morning coffee in Los Angeles, or lunch in New York, or that first glass of wine in Paris, or a late supper in Tashkent, tune in for some cool and compelling music.
This is a free concert! But please consider purchasing a ticket just the same. Doing so will help us to do more performances, pay more players, commission more composers, and share more music worldwide.
What an exhilarating experience. Thank you to all who attended this year’s LOUD Weekend at MASS MoCA. We hope to have recordings and videos to share soon…in the meantime, here’s the review from the Old Gray Lady.
On Friday, September 24, 2021 at 6:30pm, Bang on a Can and The Noguchi Museum present the next concert in our Artists at Noguchi season. Celebrating our eleventh season of collaboration, the Bang on a Can | Artists at Noguchi series features musicians performing an inclusive blend of music from across genres and across the world.
Under the mononym, L’Rain, Brooklyn native Taja Cheek has quickly become an acclaimed figure in New York experimental music. A multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, and vocalist, her songs are equally rooted in r&b, jazz, noise, and pop, at once visceral, spiritual, ethereal, and urgent. Her performances are informed by her interest in the history of contemporary art and the legacy of downtown performance in New York City. She is particularly interested in exploring the complex nuance of black grief and its proximity to black joy, using voice memos and other manipulated samples recorded in her hometown as inspiration and source material.
Friday, August 13, 2021
Doors 6:15pm | Performance 6:30pm–7:30pm
The Noguchi Museum | 9-01 33rd Road | Long Island City, NY
www.noguchi.org/bangonacan
Celebrating our eleventh season of collaboration, on Friday, Bang on a Can and The Noguchi Museum present the first of three concerts in the 2021 Artists at Noguchi season, a monthly series of performances in the Museum’s garden and galleries. On August 13, violist and composer Jessica Pavone will present an acoustic program of original music for solo viola. The New York Times has described Pavone’s music as “distinct and beguiling…its core is steely, and its execution clear.” Her indeterminate pieces for solo viola stem from years of concentrated long tone practice and an interest in repetition, song form, and the interplay between musical instrument and the human body. She combines her long-tone rituals with delay, understated melodies, and sparse lyrical content while continuously experimenting with new forms within the music. The compositions are informed by her physical relationship to her instrument and the role the body plays in the sound and intention. In 2011, Pavone was featured in NPR’s “The Mix: 100 Composers Under 40” and The Wire magazine has since praised her “ability to transform a naked tonal gesture into something special.”
This performance will take place in The Noguchi Museum’s first floor gallery, with only 30 public tickets available. Tickets are $10 (the same price as museum admission) and allow patrons access to the galleries and garden after hours. Doors open at 6:15pm and the performance runs from 6:30pm–7:30pm. Masks are required.
The Bang on a Can | Artists at Noguchi series features musicians performing an inclusive blend of music from across genres and across the world. Concerts in September and October will be announced soon.
August 6, 2021 at 12 noon ET
PROGRAM
Jakhongir Shukur: Potter’s Wheel
Carman Moore: STALLION
James Sellars: Prelude from Suite
The August edition of First Fridays with Robert Black brings you three master compositions by three master composers – Jakhongir Shukur’s Potter’s Wheel, a gently beguiling perpetual motion machine, Carman Moore’s STALLION, a charming and witty gallop, and the achingly beautiful Prelude by James Sellars from his 5 movement Suite. A program guaranteed to touch the heart, titillate the mind, and make you smile.
First Fridays with Robert Black is a monthly series of virtual mini-concerts featuring brand-spanking new, recently new, and kind of new music for solo double bass – streaming from his home studio in Hartford, Connecticut, at noon (EST). Whether you’re having your morning coffee in Los Angeles, or lunch in New York, or that first glass of wine in Paris, or a late supper in Tashkent, tune in for some cool and compelling music.
This is a free concert! But please consider purchasing a ticket just the same. Doing so will help us to do more performances, pay more players, commission more composers, and share more music worldwide.
