Bang on a Can Announces Arlen Hlusko as the New Bang on a Can All-Stars Cellist

Bang on a Can has announced Canadian cellist Arlen Hlusko as the newest member of the Bang on a Can All-Stars. Hlusko has been performing with the All-Stars throughout the 2019-20 season and now joins the group as the permanent cellist.

Bang on a Can Co-Founders and Co-Artistic Directors Michael Gordon, David Lang, and Julia Wolfe, welcome Hlusko by saying, "We're thrilled to introduce the dynamic cellist Arlen Hlusko as the newest member of the Bang on a Can All-Stars. Her spectacular playing and commitment to community engagement wowed us all!"

Hlusko's first official performance as an All-Star will be Saturday, August 1, 2020 at MASS MoCA in North Adams, MA as part of Bang on a Can & Friends, two nights of live-in person music on July 31 and August 1. She'll perform a solo work - Michael Gordon's Light is Calling - as well Louis Andriessen's Workers Union and Thurston Moore's Stroking Piece #1 with the All-Stars. More about Bang on a Can & Friends, including program info, performer bios, and COVID-19 safety information, is available at friends2020.bangonacan.org.

Hlusko says, "I've had so much fun getting to know and perform with Vicky, David, Ken, Mark, and Robert this year, and it's a dream come true to get to continue making music with them for many years to come!"

Hlusko will also be one of the featured performers on the next online Bang on a Can Marathon on Sunday, August 16, 2020 streaming live from 3pm-9pm ET at marathon2020.bangonacan.org. She will premiere a new piece - one of eleven commissions especially for the day - by composer and singer Annika Socolofsky, who makes magical music exploring the seams between folk traditions and new music performance.

About Arlen Hlusko: Arlen Hlusko is a dynamic, versatile young artist who has performed extensively as soloist and chamber musician across North America, Asia, and Europe. A Grammy-award winner for her collaboration with The Crossing, graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music and of Ensemble Connect (the resident ensemble of Carnegie Hall), She has recently been featured performer with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, BBC Concert Orchestra, and the National Arts Centre Orchestra, among others. Arlen has also been on the roster of preeminent summer festivals including Music from Angel Fire, Tippet Rise, Spoleto USA, and Bay Chamber Concerts. As a teacher, she has served on faculty of Curtis Summerfest, New York Philharmonic and Philadelphia Orchestra Teaching Artists, and given masterclasses in the USA, Canada, and Germany. Committed to using her music to serve her community, Arlen founded her own interactive chamber music concert series, Philadelphia Performances for Autism, and is involved with several communities in Philadelphia & NYC, including Carnegie Hall's "Musical Connections" at Sing Sing Correctional Facility. For more information, please visit www.arlenhlusko.com.

About the Bang on a Can All-Stars: The Bang on a Can All-Stars are Robert Black, bass; Vicky Chow, piano and keyboards; David Cossin, percussion; Arlen Hlusko, cello; Mark Stewart, electric guitar; and Ken Thomson, clarinets. Known worldwide as some of the best contemporary musicians, the Bang on a Can All-Stars formed in 1992 and are recognized 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. With a massive repertoire of works written specifically for the group's distinctive instrumentation and style of performance, the All-Stars have become a genre in their own right.

Performing throughout the U.S. and internationally, the Bang on a Can All-Stars have shattered the definition of what concert music is today. The group's celebrated projects include their landmark recording 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, and others. Recent project highlights include Road Trip, an immersive and visually stunning concert collaboratively-composed by Michael Gordon, David Lang, and Julia Wolfe to commemorate the 30+ year journey of Bang on a Can; the premiere performances and recording of Julia Wolfe's Pulitzer Prize winning Anthracite Fields including their recent sold out performance at Carnegie Hall; Field Recordings, a major multi-media project featuring over 30 commissioned works by Tyondai Braxton, Mira Calix, Anna Clyne, Bryce Dessner, Michael Gordon, Jóhann Jóhannsson, David Lang, Christian Marclay, Steve Reich, Caroline Shaw, Julia Wolfe; the world premiere and album release of Cloud River Mountain, a collaboration featuring Chinese superstar singer Gong Linna; and more. The All-Stars record on Cantaloupe Music and have released past recordings on Sony, Universal, and Nonesuch.

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 its festivals LOUD Weekend at MASS MoCA and LONG PLAY, 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. Bang on a Can has also recently launched its new digital archive, CANLAND, an extensive archive of its recordings, videos, posters, program books, and more. Thirty-three years of collected music and associated ephemera have been digitized and archived online and is publicly accessible in its entirety. For more information about Bang on a Can, please visit www.bangonacan.org.