Bang On A Can All-Stars Perform Julia Wolfe's Pulitzer Prize-Winning ANTHRACITE FIELDS

Bang on a Can All-Stars-joined by the Grammy Award-nominated Choir of Trinity Wall Street, led by Julian Wachner-will perform Julia Wolfe's Pulitzer Prize-winning Anthracite Fields on Saturday, December 1 at 9:00 p.m. in Zankel Hall.

Inspired by miners living in the Pennsylvania coal region, Wolfe's profound work uses oral histories, interviews with miners and their families, speeches, children's rhymes, and other sources to create a powerful cantata that speaks to the multigenerational effects of the industry on American miners, their loved ones, and their community. The hour-long work was commissioned by the Mendelssohn Club of Philadelphia, which gave the world premiere, along with the Bang on a Can All-Stars in Philadelphia in 2014. Anthracite Fields was the recipient of the 2015 Pulitzer Prize in Music.

Prior to the performance, at 8:00 p.m., ticketholders are invited to a pre-concert talk with composer Julia Wolfe and scenographer Jeff Sugg in conversation with John Schaefer, host of WNYC's New Sounds and Soundcheck.

Later this season on May 1, a new work by Julia Wolfe, co-commissioned by Carnegie Hall, will receive its New York premiere on a concert by the New World Symphony, led by Michael Tilson Thomas. The concert will also feature pianist Yuja Wang as soloist in Prokofiev's Piano Concerto No. 5.

About the Artists
Julia Wolfe, a 2016 MacArthur Fellow who was also just named Musical America's Composer of the Year, draws inspiration from folk, classical, and rock genres, bringing a modern sensibility to each while simultaneously tearing down the walls between them. She is also co-founder and co-artistic director of New York's legendary music collective Bang on a Can. Recent projects include her evening-length Steel Hammer for the Bang on a Can All-Stars and singers which is touring in an expanded theatrical form with director Anne Bogart and her Siti Company and received its New York premiere at BAM's 2015 Next Wave festival. Wolfe's body concerto riSE and fLY, commissioned by the BBC and performed last season by the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, featured percussionist Colin Currie playing rapid-fire body slaps and street percussion.

Wolfe has written a major body of work for strings, from quartets to full orchestra. Her quartets, as described by The New Yorker, "combine the violent forward drive of rock music with an aura of minimalist serenity [using] the four instruments as a big guitar, whipping psychedelic states of mind into frenzied and ecstatic climaxes." Wolfe's Cruel Sister for string orchestra, inspired by a traditional English ballad, was commissioned by the Munich Chamber Orchestra and received its U.S. premiere at the Spoleto Festival. Fuel for string orchestra is a collaboration with filmmaker Bill Morrison. She has collaborated with theater artist Anna Deavere Smith, choreographer Susan Marshall, designers Jeff Sugg and Jim Findlay, and director François Girard, among others. Her music has been heard at venues throughout the world, including the Sydney Olympic Arts Festival, LG Arts Center (South Korea), Settembre Musica (Italy), Theatre de la Ville (France), the Brooklyn Academy Of Music, Lincoln Center, and Carnegie Hall, and has been recorded on Cantaloupe Music, Teldec, Point/Universal, Sony Classical, and Argo/Decca.

Formed in 1992, the Bang on a Can All-Stars are recognized worldwide for their ultra-dynamic live performances and recordings of today's most innovative music. Freely crossing the boundaries between classical, jazz, rock, world and experimental music, this six-member amplified ensemble has consistently forged a distinct category-defying identity, taking music into uncharted territories. Performing each year throughout the United States and internationally, the All-Stars have shattered the definition of what concert music is today. Together, the All-Stars have worked in unprecedented close collaboration with some of the most important and inspiring musicians of our time, including Steve Reich, Ornette Coleman, Burmese circle drum master Kyaw Kyaw Naing, Tan Dun, DJ Spooky, and many more. The group's celebrated projects include their landmark recordings of Brian Eno's ambient classic Music for Airports and Terry Riley's In C, as well as live performances with Philip Glass, Meredith Monk, Don Byron, Iva Bittova, Thurston Moore, Owen Pallett and others. The All-Stars were awarded Musical America's Ensemble of the Year and have been heralded as "the country's most important vehicle for contemporary music" by the San Francisco Chronicle.

Grammy Award-nominated interpreters of both early and new music, The Choir of Trinity Wall Street, under the direction of Julian Wachner, can be heard in performances in New York City and around the world. The choir leads the liturgical music on Sundays at Trinity Church and St. Paul's Chapel in downtown Manhattan, while performing in Bach at One, Compline by Candlelight, and many other concerts and festivals throughout the year, often with the Trinity Baroque Orchestra, NOVUS NY and the Trinity Youth Chorus. Critically acclaimed annual performances of Handel's Messiah are part of its long and storied tradition, and attending the Choir's performances at Trinity's annual Twelfth Night Festival and Time's Arrow Festivals has become a tradition for many New Yorkers as well. The Choir has toured extensively throughout the United States, making appearances at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Berkeley Early Music Festival, BAM Next Wave Festival, and the Prototype Festival. The Choir is also increasingly in-demand internationally, and recent seasons have seen performances at Paris's Théâtre des Champs-Élysées and London's Barbican Theatre. The Choir has been featured with the Bang on a Can All-Stars, the New York Philharmonic, and with the Rolling Stones on their 50th anniversary tour.