Bang on a Can Summer Music Festival at MASS MoCA
A new music utopia for composers and performers
July 14-Aug 3, 2025
Applications for the 2025 program are online now!
The Bang on a Can Summer Music Festival at MASS MoCA (the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art) is a 3-week musical utopia for innovative composers and performers in the beautiful Berkshire mountains of western Massachusetts dedicated entirely to adventurous contemporary music.
This joyful, collaborative program includes daily rehearsals and seminars, performances in the museum galleries, world music and improvisation workshops, technology and music entrepreneurship seminars, and concerts and events in the community. The Bang on a Can Summer Festival has been described as “utterly transformative” and “life-changing,” and it’s a place where musicians generate powerful connections with new life-long collaborators, friends, and colleagues.
The residency culminates in a world-class 3-day festival called LOUD Weekend including high octane performances by festival ensembles and world premieres by the festival composers! It also features many special guest luminaries of experimental music converging to create an eclectic supermix of over 30 concerts in 3 days, taking over every space in and around the museum.
Our FACULTY members are some of the most innovative musicians of our time. These are musicians who have dedicated their lives to commissioning, rehearsing, recording and performing music beyond the cutting edge.
Past participants say:
“Bang on a Can is really everything I want the music world to be — inclusive, engaging, innovative, fun, thought-provoking, beautiful, challenging, and rewarding. The festival brings all of that and more directly into focus, and it has made all the difference in the word to have been a part of it.”
“I have never had an experience like this before: the idea of building the kind of musical world one wants to live in seems to be something that is really possible here — it’s a place of community and possibility that is utterly transformative.”
“The people you meet at Bang on a Can are more than just your fellow musicians, contemporary music comrades and colleagues– they become family”
The Bang on a Can Summer Music Festival will take place at MASS MoCA, located in North Adams, Massachusetts. MASS MoCA presents exhibitions and performances by renowned artists and cultural institutions, but it also is a place where the process of creativity is explored; rehearsals, art fabrication shops, and production studios are open to public view. Bang on a Can has found a home at MASS MoCA for the Bang on a Can Summer Music Festival and is thrilled to work with them in building a bridge between the arts.
The Bang on a Can Summer Music Festival at MASS MoCA is made possible with support from the National Endowment for the Arts, The Francis Goelet Charitable Trust, The Joe Holt Charitable Fund, the Amphion Foundation, ASCAP Foundation Irving Caesar Fund, Music Information Centre Lithuania, Dave Lake, Valerie Dillon and Daniel Lewis, Alice M. Ditson Fund of Columbia University, Robert Black Foundation, The Lockman Family Fund, Herb Leventer, Elizabeth and Justus Schlichting, Art Music Denmark and the Danish Arts Foundation, In Honor of Richard E. Thurston, and Williamson Foundation for Music.
Special thanks go out to Drury High School, Conte Middle School, Williams College, and Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts.
Concert pianos provided courtesy of Falcetti Pianos, offering new and used pianos, rentals, and service. Locations in Springfield and Natick, MA.
Additional support is provided by Hotel Downstreet.
If you have more questions about the festival, please contact the festival manager Philippa Thompson: philippa at bangonacan.org
Photo credits: photo of Julian Otis (voice) and Kirsten Lees-Warfield (trombone), photo of large ensemble conducted by Brad Lubman, and photo of Ghanaian drumming with Nani Agbeli by Kaelan Burkett/MASS MoCA. All other photos courtesy of MASS MoCA.
“Bang on a Can Summer Music Festival at MASS MoCA” video by Joe Aidonidis at Great Sky Media
“What is the Summer Festival” video by Souki Mehdaoui.