News

From July 17- August 3 we returned to MASS MoCA (the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art) for our 12th Annual Summer Music Festival, a utopian residency program dedicated entirely to the creation, study, and performance of the most adventurous music of our time.  

Performance highlights of the three-week intensive included daily recitals in the museum galleries at 1:30pm (M-F) & 4:30pm (M-Sat) (free with museum admission) featuring festival faculty and fellows; Bang on a Can All-Stars and special guests performing Julia Wolfe’s mesmerizing evening-length art ballad Steel Hammer on Saturday, July 27Composer Premiere Concert on Monday, July 29 showcasing brand new works written by the Summer Festival composition fellows; and the 12th Bang on a Can Marathon at MASS MoCA, the annual 6-hour day-night boundary-busting festival concert featuring 50+ musicians and composers from around the world, which closes the Festival on Saturday, August 3.

Thank you for all the fellows, faculty, and fans who joined us! Stay tuned for application information for the 2014 festival coming in the fall. 

This Sunday, June 16 Bang on a Can returns to lower Manhattan with its annual incomparable super-mix of boundary-busting music from around the corner and around the globe!  The 2013 Bang on a Can Marathon will feature 9 hours of rare performances by some of the most innovative pioneering musicians of our time side-by-side with some of today’s newest exciting young artists.

FEATURING MUSIC by Hans Abrahamsen, Derek Bermel, Jeffrey Brooks, Caleb Burhans, Peter Evans, Michael Gordon, John King, David Lang, Lukas Ligeti, Annea Lockwood, Nico Muhly, Tamar Muskal, Angélica Negron, Charlie Piper, Kendall Williams, Julia Wolfe, Shara Worden, Tatsuya Yoshida, Tom Ze, and more.

FEATURING PERFORMANCES by Alarm Will Sound, Asphalt Orchestra, Bang on a Can All-Stars, Maya Beiser with the Provenance Project Band, Brooklyn Youth Chorus, Le Cabaret Contemporain, David Cossin & Ben Reimer, Peter Evans, Monica Germino, Hotel Elefant, Yungchen Llamo & Anton Batagov, NYU Steel Pan Ensemble, NYU Contemporary Music Ensemble, Talea Ensemble, Talk Normal, TILT Brass, Shara Worden, and more.

See the full schedule here.

Co-presented by LMCC and Pace University as part of the River To River Festival 2013. 

On May 18 & 20 Bang on a Can brings its polyrhythmic virtuosity and all-world versatility to the Beijing Modern Music Festival, celebrating the breadth of the genre-busting Bang on a Can sound with two boundary bending programs of music by co-founders and artistic directors Michael Gordon, David Lang, and Julia Wolfe.

Performed by the Bang on a Can Festival Ensemble, a band of cutting-edge New York new music performers led by veteran Bang on a Can violinist Todd Reynolds with virtuoso performers from the annual  Bang on a Can Summer Festival @ MASS MoCA, including David Friend (piano), Mariel Roberts (cello), Jessica Schmitz (flute), Ashley Smith (clarinet), and Ellery Trafford (percussion), these two concerts feature an uncategorizable supermix of music, combining classical virtuosity with the power and energy of orchestra, rock, jazz, and experimental tradition. 

More information here.

This May the unstoppable Bang on a Can All-Stars return to Europe!  From May 7 – 17, the band reunites with Trio Medieval for Julia Wolfe’s Steel Hammer in Brugge, London, and UppsalaField Recordings in ReykjavikMichael Gordon, David Lang, Julia Wolfe, Louis Andriessen, Brian Eno, and Steve Reich in Norwich and Brugge.  

More information here.

Thank you to all who joined us on June 11 for our annual Bang on a Can Benefit!  This year we honored David Bither, Executive Vice President of Nonesuch Records with an intimate once-in-a-lifetime concert featuring our very own Asphalt Orchestra, Bang on a Can All-Star David Cossin with Glenn Kotche (of Wilco fame), virtuoso violinist Todd Reynolds performing Michael Gordon’s Light is Calling, sublime folksters Carolina Chocolate Drops, and the wildly creative singer-songwriter Devendra Banhart.

Stay tuned for photos coming soon!

This spring Bang on a Can’s virtuoso neo-marching band Asphalt Orchestra pounds the pavement, bringing both its inventive indoor and guerilla outdoor personas to the stages and streets!

On April 12 at Northwestern University the band makes its Chicago area debut  bringing the eclectic spirit of the renegade group to the stage featuring music by Frank Zappa, Tatsuya Yoshida, David Byrne and Annie Clark, Björk, and new music by members of the band.  More information and tickets here. 

Thank you to all who came out for our first annual Benefit Party for the Summer Festival at MASS MoCA, joining us in toasting the Festival and its nearly 400 alumni who are out in the world breaking boundaries and rewriting the rules of the “new music” universe! 

Even if you couldn’t come to the karaoke shindig, it’s not too late to contribute to the cause.  Donate any amount, and we’ll send you music and gifts and shower you with thanks for your role in the revolution.

On March 14 Bang on a Can’s radical partnership between artists and audiences to commission new works from adventurous composers returns to New York City’s Merkin Hall with a program of ear-bending world premieres commissioned by the people! Part of the Ecstatic Music Festival, the performance will include new works by cutting-edge multimedia composer Anna Clyne, hypnotic electronic guru Dan Deacon, electro-acoustic experimentalist and installation artist Paula Matthusen, and Icelandic electronica minimalist Jóhann Jóhannsson, as well as the world premieres of avant-indie rocker Tyondai Braxton’s Trems and cross-genre composer/performer Fay Kueen Wang’s Weltinseln featuring Wang performing alongside the All-Stars.

More information and tickets here.

On March 4 Bang on a Can presents the second of a pair of concerts in conjunction with the MoMA exhibition Inventing Abstraction, 1910–1925, revealing how pioneering European composers of 100 years ago forever changed music in New York.  Curated by Bang on a Can co-founder and artistic director David Lang, each concert pairs two composers— an early-20th-century innovator, and a New Yorker he influenced— and is performed nearly exclusively by alumni and faculty of the Bang on a Can Summer Music Festival at MASS MoCA, a veritable who’s who roster of cutting-edge performers on the New York new music scene. 

The first concert, Consonant Abstraction: Claude Debussy and Steve Reich, was on February 26 (hear the show hereDissonant Abstraction: Arnold Schoenberg and Morton Feldman, on March 4. 

More information and tickets here. 

On January 25 and 26 the Bang on a Can All-Stars perform their first concerts of 2013 along the East Coast!  

January 25 brings the band to the Atlas Performing Arts Center in Washington, DC in a program featuring music by Michael Gordon, David Lang, Julia Wolfe, and Kate Moore from Big Beautiful Dark and Scary (recently named one of iTunes “Best of 2012 Albums”), as well as works by long-time genre-busting collaborators Don Byron and Thurston Moore. 

On January 26 the All-Stars will perform the ground-breaking multimedia project Field Recordings at the Quick Center for the Arts at Fairfield University featuring new works by Tyondai Braxton, Mira Calix, Florent Ghys, Michael Gordon, David Lang, Christian Marclay, Todd Reynolds, Julia Wolfe, and Nick Zammuto.  

More info and tickets here.