Classical Music

Classical Music

Based on actual 18th-century texts, David Lang's anatomy theater follows the astonishing progression of an English murderess from confession to execution and, ultimately, public dissection before a paying audience of fascinated onlookers. Through the miracle of opera, she sings through it all. Composed by David Lang, with libretto co-written by Lang and scenic designer Mark Dion, anatomy theater a tuneful and grisly theatrical event that conjures a time when "specialists" traveled from town to town in pre-modern Europe, conducting public dissections of the corpses of executed criminals, seeking evidence of moral corruption in the interior of the human body. And as Lang himself warns in the liner notes, it's not for the squeamish - and that includes the performers: "No singers were harmed in the creation of this opera. It seems like an odd statement to make about an entertainment, but it is definitely appropriate to make it, since our piece is so full of terrifying things. Crime and punishment, execution, dissection, the thin line that separates moralistic cruelty from dispassionate scientific inquiry - they're all there."

Field Recordings collects the Bang on a Can All-Stars' interpretations of newly commissioned works by Tyondai Braxton, Mira Calix, Anna Clyne, Bryce Dessner, Florent Ghys, Michael Gordon, J�hann J�hannsson, David Lang, Christian Marclay, Steve Reich, Todd Reynolds, Julia Wolfe and Nick Zammuto. In the words of composer David Lang, "Field Recordings is a kind of ghost story. We asked composers from different parts of the music world to find a recording of something that already exists -- a voice, a sound, a faded scrap of melody -- and then write a new piece around it. And so they did." A double-disc multimedia project featuring five videos on DVD, Field Recordings highlights the astonishing versatility of the All-Stars, whose grasp of musical styles ranging from classical to rock to musique concrete has helped redefine the term "new music."

Founded in 1988 by artistic director Francisco J. N��ez, the Young People's Chorus of New York City is an internationally renowned multicultural youth chorus with a reputation for superb virtuosity and brilliant showmanship. Transient Glory is a series conceived by N��ez in 2001 to spotlight the YPC as a creative source of inspiration for the works of the world's leading composers. For the superb third collection from this series, composers Terry Riley, Meredith Monk, Michael Gordon, John Corigliano, Paquito D'Rivera and Bora Yoon were commissioned by YPC for performances that form another rich chapter in their groundbreaking repertoire.

Big expressive gestures, heavy basslines, pop and rock influences, jagged dissonance and New York-style "downtown" noise are all signatures of composer Jeffrey Brooks' vibrant and electric music. As a longtime friend and associate of Bang on a Can's founding composers (Michael Gordon, David Lang and Julia Wolfe), whom he first met while a student at Yale in the mid-1980s, Jeffrey Brooks might be best known for his wind ensemble work Dreadnought (1996), but more significantly, he is one of the few modern classical composers with a penchant for chasing rhythm in a way that even urban dancefloor DJs can understand. The Passion collects three of his most compelling works: After the Treewatcher (2012), Capriccio on the Departure of a Beloved Brother (2015) and the epic title piece (2017). Featuring edgy, raucous performances by the Bang on a Can All-Stars and the New York-based large ensemble Contemporaneous (conducted by David Bloom), the recording is, in essence, a tribute to the lasting power of friendship, and a triumph of the human spirit.

The members of Bearthoven (pianist Karl Larson, double bassist Pat Swoboda, and percussionist Matt Evans) are a piano trio in the jazz sense of the term, but in practice, they're a progressive classical ensemble that has become an expressive vehicle for a growing contingent of young composers. The trio's second release on Cantaloupe Music, American Dream, focuses on the work of composer Scott Wollschleger, and includes three new pieces: the epic title work, as well as Gas Station Canon Song and We See Things That Are Not There. Larson describes American Dream as "a reflection of the contemporary American state of mind." Rather than making a direct political statement, the album reflects the contradictory nature of the "American Dream" in our current socio-economic climate. "This music expresses the strongest sense of urgency I've experienced in my entire life," Wollschleger explains, "channeling feelings of doom, optimism, hopelessness, and the sublime. Much like a dream, these pieces weave an interconnected musical fabric of contradictory worlds." In essence, it's a direct reference to a modern American paradox: how the majestic and the repellent always seem to coexist in a state of flux, no matter the medium. American Dream is laden with rich melodies and jarring dissonances that interconnect throughout, creating a sonic experience that's by turns cinematic, surreal, contemplative, provocative - and ultimately, empowering.

When Michael Gordon's Timber, scored for six amplified wooden 2-by-4s, premiered in 2009, it brought the physicality and endurance of percussion performance to a new level. In the liner notes for Slagwerk Den Haag's recording of the piece, released on Cataloupe Music in 2011, Gordon described a connection to the work of shamanist author Carlos Castaneda, whose self-imposed spirit journey in the desert could wipe the brain clean and "bring on visions." Newly recorded by Mantra Percussion and reworked by an A-list of producers and DJs, Gordon's deep exploration into the extreme possibilities of rhythm gets the full electronic treatment on Timber Remixed. This album contains six key remixes by Squarepusher, Oneohtrix Point Never, Tim Hecker, Johann Johannsson, Fennesz and Hauschka.

Recorded and filmed among the arches, cliffs and otherworldly rock formations of the Moab Desert in Utah, Possessed documents one musician's self-actualized journey toward musical discovery and enlightenment. Equipped with only his upright bass and an intrepid production crew, Robert Black ventured into Moab in the summer of 2013 with the specific goal of engaging the environment itself in a duet, improvising his way toward a finished recording that perfectly captures the haunting majesty, mood and power of the American desert. As the longtime bassist for New York's genre-busting Bang on a Can All-Stars, Black is thoroughly tapped into the creative current of today's new music. He's also uniquely attuned to the areas where acoustic music and the sounds of nature can intersect, creating a third and totally unexpected entity that surges with unusually ecstatic energy. "Listen closely and feel the music," he encourages in the album's liner notes. "The sound, the look, the feel -- it affects me. It gets inside my head, inside my body. My hands move, the bass sings, the landscape responds and directs the movements, controls the sound. The music comes...from I don’t know where. I close my eyes. I lose myself. I give in. I surrender. I am transported. I am...possessed."

Featuring limited edition packaging in a real wooden box with heat stamped cover design, Timber is composed by Michael Gordon, co-founder of Bang on a Can and Cantaloupe Music. Timber is an evening-length tour de force. Scored for six graduated wooden Simantras percussion instruments devised by French composer Iannis Xenakis the work brings the physicality, endurance and technique of percussion performance to a new level. In this new work, Gordon shapes the music in both polyrhythmic and dynamic waves of textures often each players' hands are in separate rhythmic 'worlds', each traversing a different dynamic contour from loud to soft to loud, similar in some respects to his solo for percussion, XY.

The Day was commissioned for Maya Beiser by the University of Iowa/Hancher Auditorium, and is dedicated to Maya. It premiered at SFJAZZ in San Francisco, California, in August 2016. World To Come was commissioned for Maya Beiser by Commissioning Music/USA, The Carnegie Hall Corporation, The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing arts, and several other arts organizations. It premiered in 2003 in New York City. Cellist Maya Beiser performs both of these works by David Lang with a sparkling interpretation that assures the listener they were tailor-made just for her bow.Cellist Maya Beiser defies categories. Passionately forging a career path through uncharted territories, she has captivated audiences worldwide with her virtuosity, eclectic repertoire, and relentless quest to redefine her instrument’s boundaries. The Boston Globe declares, “With virtuoso chops, rock-star charisma, and an appetite for pushing her instrument to the edge of avant-garde adventurousness, Maya Beiser is the post-modern diva of the cello,” while Rolling Stone calls her a “cello rock star.”

Classical Music

Time and again you found yourself smiling in a quiet amazement that could verge on disbelief. - NY Times the range of colors and voices that So Percussion coaxes from it's menagerie is astonishing and entrancing. - Billboard Where (we) live is a multi-media, multi-artist, fully-staged theatrical event and album featuring music written by Brooklyn-based quartet So Percussion (Adam Sliwinski, Eric Beach, Jason Treating, Josh Quillen) and special guest singer/songwriter/guitarist Grey McMurray (it's not you it's me, (k)nights on earth). a celebration of community and collaboration, Where (we) Live is an exploration of So's outermost artistic boundaries, as well as a re-examination of comfort zones.

�David Lang's, "love fail" is a meditation on love's timelessness, weaving together details from the Tristan and Isolde story with more modern sources. � The recording also spotlights the vocal quartet Anonymous 4, whose commitment to medieval music and historical scholarship has been acclaimed worldwide. � In a NYTimes review of the BAM performance, Anthony Tommasini wrote: "It was Mr. Lang's music, and the ethereal, pure-toned singing of Anonymous 4, that claimed me in the first section of the piece

The Unchanging Sea is the latest collaboration in a long-running partnership between composer Michael Gordon and filmmaker Bill Morrison. This is their fifth work for orchestra over the course of nearly two decades; starting with Decasia in 2001, the two developed a style that combined Gordon's haunting, hypnotic music with Morrison's artful manipulations of old, deteriorating film reels to craft a dreamlike experience that's by turns whimsical, nostalgic and inspiring. Co-commissioned and performed by the Seattle Symphony, The Unchanging Sea takes it direction from Gordon's electrified concerto for virtuoso pianist and multimedia artist Tomoko Mukaiyama. While the title and visual source material originate with a 1910 short film by silent era director D.W. Griffith, Morrison's film includes footage shot in Seattle in 1897, when the S.S. Willamette sailed out of Puget Sound loaded with 800 passengers and 300 horses headed for the Klondike, at the height of the Gold Rush. The album includes the companion piece Beijing Harmony, also performed by the Seattle Symphony. Inspired by a visit to the Echo Wall at Beijing's Temple of Heaven, Gordon "imagined that the sound would bounce off the stone floors and buildings to create a fanfare of echoes - an acoustical rebounding and ringing that would slowly grow in zeal and fierceness."