Asphalt Orchestra Plays THE PIXIES: SURFER ROSA Tonight

Bang on a Can's radical marching band Asphalt Orchestrareturns to Lincoln Center Out of Doors to give the world premiere of Asphalt Orchestra Plays the Pixies: Surfer Rosa, commissioned by Lincoln Center and honoring the groundbreaking album's 25th anniversary, tonight, July 28, 2013 at 6:30pm at Lincoln Center's Damrosch Park Bandshell. Parade sets by Asphalt Orchestra and Jacob Garchik's The Heavens start at 6 pm on Josie Robertson Plaza and Hearst Plaza. The program also includes performances by the Kronos Quartet with special guests Dan Deacon and Jherek Bischoff, as part of a weeklong celebration, KRONOS at 40, co-curated by Lincoln Center and Kronos Quartet.

The Pixies released Surfer Rosa - the band's first full-length record - in 1988. A cult hit then, the album's influence has grown to mammoth proportions over the years; it is now considered one of the most important recordings of its time. Name-checked by Kurt Cobain, Billy Corgan, and PJ Harvey as a major influence,Surfer Rosa still sounds current today. With production by Steve Albini (who later produced In Utero and a host of other classic records), Surfer Rosa is raw, dirty, and utterly captivating.

With Surfer Rosa, Asphalt discovers a new direction for exhilarating acoustic music by paying tribute to a modern monument. Taking the originals both literally and inspirationally, Asphalt Orchestra's rendition transforms screaming electric guitars into brass exhortations, searing vocals into a chorus of saxophones, and a lone piccolo takes on shrieking feedback while a 3-piece percussion section thrashes and grooves. Asphalt's performance will be choreographed by cross-genre dancer and director Jordana Che Toback, known for her work with the Mark Morris Dance Group, Fischerspooner, Cynthia Hopkins, Harvard's A.R.T, FringeNYC, and Michael Arenella's Dreamland Follies, plus artists as diverse as CeeLo Greene, Miasha Fischer, and the Lightouts.

Asphalt Orchestra tackles Surfer Rosa fresh from collaborations with David Byrne and St. Vincent, Yoko Ono and Goran Bregovic (works commissioned byLincoln Center Out of Doors), and from covering Björk, Zappa, Mingus and Meshuggah. Since its debut, stretching 10 packed nights at Lincoln Center Out of Doors in New York over the summers of 2009 and 2010, Asphalt Orchestra has performed across the US and Canada, at London's Barbican Centre, the TED Women conference in Washington DC, NY's Alice Tully Hall and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and more.

Asphalt Orchestra is a radical street band that brings ambitious processional music to the masses. Created by the founders of the "relentlessly inventive" new music presenter Bang on a Can (New York Magazine), Asphalt Orchestra unleashes innovative music from concert halls, rock clubs and jazz basements and takes it to the streets and beyond. The band brings together some of the most exciting rock, jazz and classical players in New York City who The New York Times called "12 top-notch brass and percussion players."

Bang on a Can is dedicated to making music new. Since its first Marathon concert in 1987, Bang on a Can has been creating an international community dedicated to innovative music, wherever it is found. With adventurous programs, it commissions new composers, performs, presents, and records new work, develops new audiences, and educates the musicians of the future. Bang on a Can is building a world in which powerful new musical ideas flow freely across all genres and borders. Bang on a Can plays "a central role in fostering a new kind of audience that doesn't concern itself with boundaries. If music is made with originality and integrity, these listeners will come." (The New York Times)

Bang on a Can celebrated 25 years during the 2011-2012 season, having grown from a one-day New York-based Marathon concert (on Mother's Day in 1987 in a SoHo art gallery) to a multi-faceted performing arts organization with a broad range of year-round international activities. "When we started Bang on a Can in 1987, in an art gallery in SoHo, we never imagined that our one-day, 12-hour marathon festival of mostly unknown music would morph into a giant international organization dedicated to the support of experimental music, wherever we would find it," write Bang on a Can Co-Founders Michael Gordon, David Lang and Julia Wolfe. "But it has, and we are so gratified to be still hard at work, all these years later. The reason is really clear to us - we started this organization because we believed that making new music is a utopian act-that people needed to hear this music and they needed to hear it presented in the most persuasive way, with the best players, with the best programs, for the best listeners, in the best context. Our commitment to changing the environment for this music has kept us busy and growing for the last 25 years, and we are not done yet."

Current projects include the annual Bang on a Can Marathon; The People's Commissioning Fund, a membership program to commission emerging composers; the Bang on a Can All-Stars, who tour to major festivals and concert venues around the world every year; recording projects; the Bang on a Can Summer Music Festival - a professional development program for young composers and performers led by today's pioneers of experimental music; Asphalt Orchestra, Bang on a Can's extreme street band that offers mobile performances re-contextualizing unusual music; Found Sound Nation, a new technology-based musical outreach program now partnering with the State Department of the United States of America to create OneBeat, a revolutionary, post-political residency program that uses music to bridge the gulf between young American musicians and young musicians from developing countries; cross-disciplinary collaborations and projects with DJs, visual artists, choreographers, filmmakers and more. Each new program has evolved to answer specific challenges faced by today's musicians, composers and audiences, in order to make innovative music widely accessible and wildly received. Bang on a Can's inventive and aggressive approach to programming and presentation has created a large and vibrant international audience made up of people of all ages who are rediscovering the value of contemporary music. For more information, visit www.bangonacan.org.

Inaugurated in 1971, Lincoln Center Out of Doors began as a small festival of street theater in collaboration with Everyman Theater (co-founded by actress Geraldine Fitzgerald.) Over its 42-year history, Out of Doors has commissioned more than 100 works from composers and choreographers and presented hundreds of major dance companies, renowned world-music artists, and legendary jazz, folk, gospel, blues and rock musicians. It has highlighted the rich cultural diversity of New York City with its annual "La Casita" project which offers poetry and spoken word, along with music and dance performances. Out of Doors has partnered with dozens of community and cultural organizations including the Caribbean Cultural Center African Diaspora Institute, Lincoln Square Neighborhood Center, Center for Traditional Music and Dance, and the Chinese American Arts Council. Since 2008, the festival has been produced by Lincoln Center's Director of Public Programming, Bill Bragin, with Producer Jill Sternheimer. Lincoln Center Out of Doors is a presentation of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts (LCPA).Lincoln Center Out of Doors 2013 is sponsored by Bank of America and Bloomberg.