The hottest opera ticket in New York right now is an absurdist post-rock pageant about clothes. And golf-playing ducks. All four performances of “What to Wear,” the collaboration between the…
“Performed with full-on commitment and admirable craft by the Helsinki Chamber Choir and the All-Stars sextet under Schweckendiek, before and after nature was given a powerful European premiere at Dance…
The Fabulous 413, from New England Public Media, is a daily afternoon radio show celebrating life in western Massachusetts — and a kind of “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” for grown-ups. Listen…
“I would venture to say that Braxton’s work, as it was presented in Bang on a Can’s ‘Long Play Festival’, offers a peaceful and humanist view on the natural act…
The closing concert at Pioneer Works is a 90th birthday celebration for Terry Riley, intended to include The Who’s Pete Townshend, but he had to cancel due to injury. Riley’s…
For those of us lured into incessant screen-scrolling in the age of the smart-phone, Long Play offers an antidote: deep immersion in epic musical adventures that will challenge and lengthen…
New York’s oversaturated audiences can be hard to impress, which made the festival’s very last moment especially gratifying: a man pushing against the crowd to tell Edwardes that her earlier…
“Long Play was a crash course in music intended to provoke and intrigue. Its few failures were the product of excess ambition, not absent skill; its many triumphs could change…
“The strategy of inclusion was on full display. Alongside contemporary classical, indie rock, electronic, dance and uncategorizable, several jazz performances took place, though that nomenclature encompassed as wide a swath,…
“Here, too, the audience was large and attentive, the visual element effective, the performance beautifully balanced and blended, and the amplified audio immaculately managed. And it was an added treat…
“I closed my eyes, the whirling rhythms transported me, opening a portal to the fractured darkness of deep space.”
Long Play Festival has become one of New York City’s most respected and anticipated contemporary music events.
From the beginning, Bang on a Can has made music about today’s world and today’s people. There’s a utopian spirit at the core of BoaC, but it’s not an abstracted,…
“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.”
