David Lang News

The PIT has announced the return of acclaimed company Recent Cutbacks with their new parody, KEVIN!!!!!.

Composer and Bang on a Can All-Stars member Ken Thomson releases his next album Restless distributed by Cantaloupe Music/Naxos on October 28, 2016.

Eighth Blackbird today has been named Ensemble of the Year by Musical America, adding to the shower of accolades the group has enjoyed throughout its 20th anniversary (2016). Earlier this month, Eighth Blackbird was named recipient of Chamber Music America's first-ever Visionary Award, and last February the group picked up its fourth Grammy Award along with a prestigious MacArthur Award for Creative and Effective Institutions. Ever in creative motion, Eighth Blackbird propels itself forward from this 20th anniversary milestone by investing its vision, talent, and experience in an ambitious new initiative for the next generation: The Blackbird Creative Lab.

As a student, Lei Liang attended class mere blocks from the Tiananmen Square protests; ever since, he has viewed art as a way to counteract violence and find freedom. His compositions pay homage to his Chinese culture while drawing on Western counterpoints. This Portrait, featuring several of Liang's West Coast colleagues, explores opposing forces, bringing together light and dark, paradise and inferno.

On Thursday, November 10, 2016 at 7:30pm, Bang on a Can and the Jewish Museum will present the second concert of their 2016-2017 concert season featuring seminal American composer Pauline Oliveros. Accompanying the Jewish Museum's exhibition, Take Me (I'm Yours), the concert will feature Oliveros in The Sound of Meditation on V-Accordion, an instrument that produces both accordion and orchestral sounds. Like the exhibition, the concert also blurs the boundary between the performer and the audience by asking the listener to participate in the making of music.

The National Symphony Orchestra, led by guest conductor Jacomo Bairos, launches its second season of DECLASSIFIED at the Kennedy Center Concert Hall on Friday, November 18, with composer/performer Bryce Dessner, the multifaceted guitarist of the indie rock band The National. This season builds on the momentum of last year's inaugural season of DECLASSIFIED concerts, with integrated activities and aesthetics in the Kennedy Center Grand Foyer, pre- and post- concert. All tickets are $39.

Visceral Dance Chicago will begin its fourth season offerings with a Fall engagement at the Harris Theater in Millennium Park. This will include world premieres 'Atlas' by ArUsUc Director Nick Pupillo, and a new commission by LA-based choreographer Erica Sobol. Scroll down for a sneak peek!

Third Coast Percussion, a vibrant, virtuosic ensemble devoted to exploring and expanding the sonic possibilities of the percussion repertoire, marks the 80th birthday of Pulitzer Prize-winning contemporary American composer Steve Reich, a founding father of musical minimalism.

American Composers Orchestra's (ACO), under the leadership of Artistic Director Derek Bermel and Music Director George Manahan, opens its 40th Anniversary Season on Friday, October 28, 2016 at 7:30pm with Orchestra Underground: Contempo-Scary Music at Carnegie Hall's subterranean Zankel Hall.

Kaufman Music Center's Face the Music, the country's only youth orchestra dedicated to studying and performing music by living composers, is tuning up for an exciting new season that includes a tribute to pioneering new music organization Bang On A Can to commemorate its 30th anniversary, performances of John Adams's notoriously difficult "Son of Chamber Symphony." as well as works by David Lang, Darcy James Argue, Snarky Puppy, Angelica Negron, Julia Wolfe and Missy Mazzoli.

This season, Trinity Church Wall Street's music program continues to minister to New Yorkers through an unparalleled array of free, ambitious musical offerings.

The deceptively simple lyrics and melodies of David Lang's Memorial Ground, sung by a massed chorus of voices young and old at the East Neuk Festival on 2 July this year, made for a powerfully moving musical premiere to mark the beginning of the Battle of the Somme a century ago. To commemorate the end of that devastating 21-week battle, a specially revised version of Memorial Ground is performed at a free ticketed event in London at the National Portrait Gallery in November as part of 14-18 NOW, the UK's arts programme for the First World War centenary.

For the 2016-2017 season, Carnegie Hall has appointed Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Steve Reich to hold the Richard and Barbara Debs Composer's Chair.

Third Coast Percussion, a vibrant, virtuosic ensemble devoted to exploring and expanding the sonic possibilities of the percussion repertoire, marks the 80th birthday of Pulitzer Prize-winning contemporary American composer Steve Reich, a founding father of musical minimalism.

Carnegie Hall presents Music Director George Manahan and the American Composers Orchestra (ACO) on Friday, October 28 at 7:30 p.m., in the first of two concerts in Zankel Hall this season as part of the orchestra's 40th anniversary. The concert, a Halloween-themed program titled Orchestra Underground: Contempo-Scary Music, includes two world premieres: Paul Moravec's "The Overlook Hotel Suite" from The Shining, featuring music from his new opera based on the classic Stephen King horror novel, and Judith Shatin's Black Moon for Orchestra and Conductor-Controlled Electronics, co-commissioned by Carnegie Hall for its 125 Commissions Project. The program also features electrifying music from Bernard Herrmann's Psycho Suite-from Alfred Hitchcock's legendary film-and David Del Tredici's Dracula. Guest artists include soprano and narrator Nancy Lundy and electronic engineer Maxwell Tfirn.

On September 15-23, 2016, the fifth annual Brooklyn Emerging Artists in Theater (BEAT) Festival will take place, showcasing Brooklyn's most exciting crop of local theater, dance, and voice talent, performing in unique locations borough-wide.

Steve Reich turns 80 this fall, and Miller Theatre joins with concert halls around the world to celebrate this iconic American composer on Today, September 15, 2016, 8:00 p.m.

American composer Michael Gordon has been named the first-ever Composer-in-Residence of the Young People's Chorus of New York City (YPC). The three-year residency, beginning this month, will comprise a new work composed by Mr. Gordon each year to be workshopped by the choristers and Artistic Director Francisco J. Nuñez and premiered by YPC at the end of each season. Mr. Gordon's residency will also include another new work composed for YPC's younger children, YPC's Satellite Schools children, and its community choruses; as well as masterclasses for YPC singers; and his participation as an artistic advisor.

The Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra (CSO) and the Cincinnati Pops announced highly-anticipated international tours to Asia in March of 2017 with six performances in Hong Kong, Beijing, Shanghai and Taiwan, as well as the CSO undertaking an extensive, eleven-concert tour across Europe over three weeks in August and September. The Orchestra will be on tour for five total weeks in 2017, performing in 12 cities across seven different countries.

In the video below, go backstage with Zoe Doano, who plays Cosette in the West End production of Les Miserables, as she chats with the cast and crew and goes in-depth on the show's costumes!