Bang on a Can Announces Summer Concerts

Bang on a Can celebrates summer in the city with seven free (or nearly free) performances in New York, showcasing the breadth and diversity of its continuously adventurous curatorial vision.

Bang on a Can and The Noguchi Museum continue their outdoor Music in the Gardensummer concert series, held in the Museum's serene sculpture garden on Sunday afternoons at 3pm, with four performances by Yungchen Lhamo and Anton Batagov (June 9), Kyaw Kyaw Naing (July 14), Vicky Chow (August 11), and Mantra Percussion in Michael Gordon's Timber (September 8); all concerts are free with Museum admission. On June 16 from 1-10pm, Bang on a Can and the River to River Festival present the annual Bang on a Can Marathon, this year at Pace University's Michael Schimmel Center for the Arts. On July 13, New York's electric chamber band Bang on a Can All-Stars take the stage on Governors Island for two concerts, as part of the Rite of Summer Music Festival; and on July 28, Bang on a Can's extreme street band Asphalt Orchestra debuts their interpretation of the Pixies' iconic album Surfer Rosa, commissioned and presented by Lincoln Center Out of Doors. From July 26-28 at Lincoln Center Out of Doors, Bang on a Can's social engagement wing Found Sound Nation hosts its Street Studio - a mobile recording studio equipped for passersby and musicians alike to spontaneously create and record original music. For performance details, see the schedule at the end of this press release.

The Noguchi Museum & Bang on a Can: Music in the Garden
On June 9, celebrated Tibetan singer Yungchen Lhamo and Russian pianist Anton Batagov will perform selections from their upcoming post-minimalist improvisatory album Tayatha, due out on Cantaloupe Music on June 25. The two met through their mutual friendship with famed choreographer Bill T. Jones, so it is only natural that their first musical collaboration would be based on movement and improvisation. A native of Lhasa, Lhamo is known for her hypnotic a cappella performances and her commitment to Tibetan history and culture. Batagov is a graduate of the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory, and has been described by The Los Angeles Times as "a Russian Terry Riley." Since the late '90s, he has drawn openly from Buddhist philosophy and practice.

Kyaw Kyaw Naing performs in the Museum's sculpture garden on July 14. Naing is a modern Burmese traditional musician and master of the pat waing, a traditional set of 21 tuned Burmese drums that is exceptionally rare to find in the US. The player sits in the middle of a horseshoe-shaped shell made of elaborately carved wood and decorated with gold leaf and plays furiously fast melodic music. Naing is one of the only artists to widely spread the sound of traditional Burmese music and composed and recorded a celebrated set of work with the Bang on a Can All-Stars captured on the Cantaloupe Music album Bang on a Can Meets Kyaw Kyaw Naing.

Bang on a Can All-Star pianist Vicky Chow performs at the Noguchi Museum on August 11. As a member of the All-Stars and outside of the group, Chow has performed extensively as a classical and contemporary soloist, chamber musician, and ensemble member, and has been described as "brilliant" (New York Times), "a monster pianist" (Time Out New York) and "one of the new stars of new music" (Los Angeles Times). Chow's passion for new music has propelled her to work with leading musicians including John Adams, Louis Andriessen, Bryce Dessner (The National) Philip Glass, Glenn Kotche (Wilco), David Longstreth (Dirty Projectors), Steve Reich, Terry Riley, and Lee Ranaldo (Sonic Youth).

On September 8, Mantra Percussion performs Michael Gordon's Timber, a sonic and meditative percussion sextet scored for six amplified custom-built sawhorses. Gordon calls their sound "primitively electronic." His work creates the impression that sound is traveling throughout the room by subtly shifting the accents one player to another. The result is an ambient, otherworldly, and sweeping meditation on sound and rhythm. Timber was released on Cantaloupe Music in August 2011.

Bang on a Can Marathon 2013: June 16
The 2013 Bang on a Can Marathon is a non-stop, nine-hour super-mix of boundary-busting music from around the corner and around the globe. This year's marathon includes music by Hans Abrahamsen, Derek Bermel, Jeffrey Brooks, Caleb Burhans, Peter Evans, Michael Gordon, John King, David Lang, Lukas Ligeti, Annea Lockwood, Nico Muhly, Tamar Muskal, Angélica Negron, Charlie Piper, Kendall Williams, Julia Wolfe, Shara Worden, Tatsuya Yoshida, Tom Ze, and many more. Performers include Alarm Will Sound, Asphalt Orchestra, Bang on a Can All-Stars, Maya Beiser with the Provenance Project Band, Brooklyn Youth Chorus, Le Cabaret Contemporain, David Cossin & Ben Reimer, Peter Evans, Monica Germino, Hotel Elefant, Yungchen Llamo & Anton Batagov, NYU Steel Pan Ensemble, NYU Contemporary Music Ensemble, Talea Ensemble, Talk Normal, TILT Brass and Shara Worden, with more to be announced.

Bang on a Can All-Stars at the Rite of Summer Music Festival, Governors Island: July 13 (rain date July 14)
The Bang on a Can All-Stars celebrate the summer season with two concerts (at 1pm and 3pm) on July 13, showcasing the group's no-holds-barred core sound. The band performs Steve Reich's Electric Counterpoint for electric guitar, Michael Gordon's harrowing Industry for solo cello and electronics, David Lang's kaleidoscopic sunray, Julia Wolfe's edgy and dense Lick from 1994, Thurston Moore's noise meditation Stroking Piece #1, and Louis Andriessen's iconic Workers Union for any loud-sounding group of instruments.

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 U.S. and internationally, the All-Stars have shattered the definition of what concert music is today.

Found Sound Nation at Lincoln Center Out of Doors: July 26-28
Bang on a Can's innovative music-making/recording collective Found Sound Nation (FSN) holds the first of four field sessions on Lincoln Center's Josie Robertson Plaza from 4:30-7:30pm on July 26. The group of eclectic musician/educators, led by co-founders composer/pianist Christopher Marianetti and composer/horn player Jeremy Thal, emphasize a mobile, accessible, collaborative way of recording and producing professional-quality music. At Out of Doors FSN will engage performers, audience members, and passersby to make music together - using voice, improvised and actual instruments - that will be recorded on multi-tracks for later mixing, playback, and downloading. Additional music-making/recording sessions will take place onSaturday, July 27 from 11:30am-2:30pm and 4:30-7:30pm and on Sunday, July 28 from 3:30-6:30pm.

Asphalt Orchestra Plays the Pixies at Lincoln Center Out of Doors: July 28
Taking the originals both literally and inspirationally, Asphalt Orchestra, Bang on a Can's 12-piece mobile virtuoso band of brass, winds, and percussion, discovers a new direction for exhilarating acoustic music by paying tribute to a modern monument - legendary rock band the Pixies' Surfer Rosa - for the album's 25th anniversary, commissioned by Lincoln Center Out of Doors. The Pixies released Surfer Rosa, the band's first full-length record, in 1988. A cult hit when it was released, 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.

Asphalt Orchestra tackles Surfer Rosa fresh from collaborations with David Byrne and St. Vincent, Yoko Ono and Goran Bregovic, and from covering Björk, Zappa, Mingus and Meshuggah. Since its debut, stretching 10 packed nights at Lincoln Center Out of Doors Festival 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. A cult hit when it was released, 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.

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 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 createOneBeat, 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.