Bang on a Can and MASS MoCA Announce Three-Day Music Festival 'LOUD Weekend'

Bang on a Can and MASS MoCA announce the launch of a new, three-day music festival called LOUD Weekend, presented for the first time from Friday, August 2 through Sunday, August 4, 2019, at MASS MoCA in North Adams, located in the Berkshire mountains of western Massachusetts (1040 MASS MoCA Way). Dozens of concerts will take place in the museum's vast galleries and throughout its stunning collection of indoor and outdoor performing arts venues, over the three-day period. Early Bird tickets are available now for $60 (3-Day Pass), for a limited time.

LOUD Weekend is an expansion of Bang on a Can's long-running Bang on a Can Marathon, tripling that inclusive and ambitious programming from one day, to three days. Of the new project, which will take place at MASS MoCA in 2019 and at MASS MoCA and in New York City in 2020, Bang on a Can co-founders and artistic directors Michael Gordon, David Lang, and Julia Wolfe say:

"12 hours is not enough! We are blowing up the Marathon format so you can feel the full range of revolutionary curiosity in the music world today. We call it LOUD Weekend."

Highlights of the inaugural Bang on a Can LOUD Weekend at MASS MoCA include:

• The electric Bang on a Can All-Stars performing Field Recordings a major multi-media concert of endless ambient textures, film, and electro-acoustic forays into the future
• Ben Frost's visceral and maniacal Music for 6 Guitars featuring Ben Frost, Daniel Reimer, Dither Guitar Quartet, and brass sextet
• The incomparable and outer-planetary Sun Ra Arkestra
• Dracula, the timeless, classic, original 1931 film brought to life with Philip Glass' acclaimed score, featuring Michael Reisman of the Philip Glass Ensemble
• Brian Eno's pre-ambient classic Discreet Music performed by Contact
• A communal, open-to-the-public, all ages and skill levels performance of Pauline Oliveros' Sonic Mediations
• A hypnotic other-worldly odyssey solo set by electronic multi-instrumentalist and singer Julianna Barwick
• The just intonation electric guitar driven Baltimore band Horse Lords
• Pioneering composer-singer Pamela Z's unique blend of operatic bel canto and live digital looping
• Composer-singer-instrument inventor Lesley Flanigan's live sonic sculpture
• Special guest composers Annie Gosfield, Tristan Perich, Brendon Randall-Myers, plus music by Bang on a Can co-founders Michael Gordon, David Lang, Julia Wolfe, and more
• Performances by Gregg August, Vicky Chow, David Cossin, Mark Stewart, Ken Thomson, Brad Lubman, Nick Photinos, Todd Reynolds, Lauren Radnofsky, additional solo sets by Ben Frost, Michael Riesman, and many more

LOUD Weekend at MASS MoCA concludes the 18th annual Bang on a Can Summer Music Festival at MASS MoCA, a professional development program led by today's pioneers of experimental music for young composers and performers selected from an international applicant pool, which runs from July 15-August 4, 2019.

Complete LOUD Weekend line-up, schedule, and additional details to be announced in May.

About Bang on a Can: 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 has 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, we never imagined that our 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, and we are not done yet."

In addition to LOUD Weekend, current projects include 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 at MASS MoCA, 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.

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