“The festival culminated in “Memory Games,” a performance of works spanning Meredith Monk’s singular career. Each piece was arranged for the Bang and a Can All Stars and a vocal…
Founded by Michael Gordon, David Lang and Julia Wolfe as a one-day marathon concert in SoHo on Mother’s Day 1987, Bang on a Can has grown over the decades into…
“Of course, Long Play is about the music and the transcendent experiences it offers us, but that isn’t the most important part of going each year, at least not for…
“[The Music for 18] ensemble playing was superb and the moderate tempo allowed a sensuous beauty to unfold.”
“Words alone are not sufficient to prepare the listener for what they’ll actually hear on a recording of 18 Musicians… [the] Bang on a Can All-Stars expertly translated the singular…
“Long Play has been around only since last year, but it is already the most important classical music festival in New York City.” “…the scope of this organization’s ambition has…
“There’s a solidity to Bang on a Can.”
A group of artists are reimagining the 1959 album “The Shape of Jazz to Come” for Bang on a Can’s Long Play festival.
“Venturing back to live performances and finding a classical music institution in rude health can be like putting on a pair of old jeans and discovering, with relief, an easy…
“‘When things are tough all around us, we dream,’ the composers Michael Gordon, David Lang and Julia Wolfe wrote in a letter to potential donors in 1996.”
Bang on a Can succeeded in chipping away at the abiding problem of 20th century music — the lingering alienation and mistrust between composers and audiences.
“And what assures Lang’s hypnotic opera of being an inescapable winner is a mesmerizingly virtuosic performance by Rod Gilfry destined for the annals of opera.”
NYTimes reviews Julia Wolfe’s Fire in my Mouth world premiere with the NY Philharmonic.
Review of the 2018 Peoples Commissioning Fund concert at Merkin Hall, by Tristan McKay. “And if there’s one thing to celebrate about Bang on a Can (other than the fabulous…
Bang on a Can at 30 – an article in 2-parts by Allan Kozinn! Part 1 – Creating the Space “In May 1987, David Lang, Julia Wolfe, and Michael Gordon…
Review from Anthony Tommasini of the NY Times. Cloud River Mountain was “written for the virtuosic Ms. Gong and the Bang on a Can All-Stars ensemble, who performed this compellingly…
Feature by Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim “Perhaps the most radical notion that has taken root thanks to Bang on a Can is that of success through generosity, with composers attending each…
Review – ‘Steel Hammer’ bangs out a spectacularly inventive social message at UCLA’s Royce Hall “An extraordinarily potent collaboration between composer Julia Wolfe and director Anne Bogart”
The NY Times review of the Bang on a Can Marathon 2015 at the Brookfield Place Winter Garden. Special Support provided by the Howard Gilman Foundation, ASCAP and Arts Brookfield.
A Julia Wolfe feature in Forbes Magazine for her 2015 award of the Pulitzer Prize, for Anthracite Fields.
