Julia Wolfe News

Bang on a Can will present an ALL LIVE Bang on a Can Marathon on Sunday, May 3, 2020 from 3pm-9pm ET. The Marathon will be streamed online at marathon2020.bangonacan.org, featuring 26 LIVE performances from musicians' homes in NYC and around the country.

Bang on a Can has announced that it will postpone its inaugural LONG PLAY festival, scheduled for May 1-3, 2020, due to the COVID-19 crisis.

Cantaloupe Music will release Meredith Monk's new album MEMORY GAME, featuring Meredith Monk & Vocal Ensemble and the Bang on a Can All-Stars, on March 27, 2020. The first track from the album, “Downfall,” is available today, exclusively from Apple Music. Meredith Monk & Vocal Ensemble and the Bang on a Can All-Stars will perform MEMORY GAME at the Big Ears Festival (March 26-29, 2020; Knoxville, TN) and Bang on a Can's inaugural Long Play Festival (May 1-3, 2020; Brooklyn, NY).

UCLA's Center for the Art of Performance (CAP UCLA) will present Jennifer Koh & Davóne Tines' Everything That Rises Must Converge on Friday, Apr 17, 2020 at 8 p.m. at Royce Hall. Tickets starting at $28 are available now at cap.ucla.edu, 310-825-2101 and the Royce Hall box office.

On Wednesday, March 25 at 7:30 p.m. in Zankel Hall. Grammy Award-winning new music choir The Crossing, led by Donald Nally, performs the New York premiere of Michael Gordon's Travel Guide to Nicaragua with cutting-edge cellist Maya Beiser, a work co-commissioned by Carnegie Hall as part of its 125 Commissions Project.

Grammya"?-winning new-music choir The Crossing, led by Donald Nally, gives the world premiere performances of Michael Gordon's Travel Guide to Nicaragua with cellist Maya Beiser in presentations by co-commissioners, the Annenberg Center on Sunday, March 22, 2020 at 7:00pm in Philadelphia and Carnegie Hall on Wednesday, March 25, 2020 at 7:30pm in New York City. Before the Carnegie Hall performance on March 25, Donald Nally and Michael Gordon will have a 6:30pm pre-concert conversation with John Schaefer, host of WNYC's New Sounds and Soundcheck.

This winter, Trinity Church Wall Street's  program of ambitious musical offerings in lower Manhattan sees the return of the audience favorite Bach + One concert series, which will crown its season in the spring with a performance of three of Bach's cantatas at the Leipzig Bach Festival. Director of Music Julian Wachner has also just been announced as one of three finalists to become the next Artistic Director of the storied Oregon Bach Festival. On the heels of last August's release of Ellen Reid's Pulitzer Prize-winning opera p r i s m on the Decca Gold label, with Wachner leading The Choir of Trinity Wall Street and Trinity's in-house contemporary orchestra, NOVUS NY, the same forces reunite for the Washington D.C. premiere of the opera in the Kennedy Center's DIRECT CURRENT festival.

Nationally acclaimed Boston-based vocal artists Lorelei Ensemble announces the 2020-2021 premiere performances of composer Julia Wolfe's Her Story, a 40-minute piece for orchestra and women's vocal ensemble, co-commissioned and co-presented by the Nashville Symphony led by Giancarlo Guerrero (Thursday, September 10, 2020 at 7:00pm; Friday, September 11, 2020 at 8:00pm; and Saturday, September 12, 2020 at 8:00pm), the San Francisco Symphony led by conductor Giancarlo Guerrero (Thursday, November 12, 2020 at 8:00pm and Saturday, November 14, 2020 at 8:00pm), the Chicago Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Marin Alsop (Friday, February 26, 2021 at 8:00pm and Saturday, February 27, 2021 at 8:00pm), the National Symphony Orchestra led by Gianandrea Noseda (Thursday, March 4, 2021 at 7:00pm; Friday, March 5, 2021 at 8:00pm; and Saturday, March 6, 2021 at 8:00pm), and the Boston Symphony Orchestra (Dates To Be Announced in Spring 2020). The world premiere performances with the Nashville Symphony will be recorded for a forthcoming album release on Naxos.

In David Mamet's book On Directing Film, he breaks down the way a linear narrative can be conveyed by placing images in direct contrast to each other. a?oeThe dream and the film are the juxtaposition of images in order to answer a question.a?? Certainly, with a majority of the action taking place upstage of a scrim and the fusion of filmed and live material, ArtsEmerson's Detroit Red, an original play by Will Power about Malcolm X's early adult life in Roxbury, leaves one feeling more as though one has watched a movie or woken from a dream than sat through a performance. Recently, I also saw Gloria: A Life, which is playing at the American Repertory Theatre. While I admittedly found the show to be trite and pandering, it obtusely fused projection effects with live performance in a way that felt cheap, gimmicky, and more like a new SnapChat filter than anything else. Contrast that with Ari Herzig's film work for Detroit Red, which snaps the audience effectively between viewpoints in black and white and splays broad images across the haziness of Adam Rigg's nondescript set. The success of the production lies in the success of the filmed elements, which establish a framing device, pinpointing the action to an exact moment in time. Additionally, the projections act as effective abstractions, allowing the actors to waver between realism and poetry as photos of their faces appear as oversized watermarks in space. Lighting designer Alan Edwards equally contributes to the cinematic feel of the piece. Sharp shafts of light slice through open space and act, ingeniously, as the camera lens might in film, focusing our attention on specifics and the relevant details. Aside from a few extraneous hat changes for the three actors who take on all the roles in the piece, between the work of Herzig, Rigg, and Edwards, the performance seems to be a study in the logistics of jump-cuts or cross-fades in real time. Adding to the film-instead-of-theatre feeling in the space, the performance actively roused and engaged the audience, which had a huge swathe of Boston school groups present. The crowd felt comfortable verbalizing responses, in part, because of our physical separation from the action presented to us, and to be able to laugh, cheer, gasp, and grimace in solidarity with those around you is a rare treat.

See what's on the schedule at National Sawdust in March! Kimbra, Little Kruta, JACK Quartet, Metropolis Ensemble and more...

PEAK Performances presents two concerts by the United States' only professional piano sextet, Grand Band, a?oethe finest, busiest pianists active in New York's contemporary-classical scenea?? (The New York Times), who arrange and play six pianos in a circle. The unconventional ensemblea?"Erika Dohi, David Friend, Paul Kerekes, Blair McMillen, Lisa Moore, and Isabelle O'Connella?"engulfs the audience in the sonic intensity of four landmark contemporary works, including the iconic and massive Gay Guerilla by a?oebrazen and brillianta?? (The New Yorker) late minimalist composer Julius Eastman. 

The Dallas Symphony Orchestra (DSO) is pleased to announce programming for the 2020 Nancy A. Nasher and David J. Haemisegger Family SOLUNA International Music & Arts Festival. Opening on April 3 and running through April 21, 2020, the festival will take place at venues in the Dallas Arts District and throughout the city. Tickets for all SOLUNA events go on sale January 30, 2020, at mydso.com/SOLUNA.

The Annenberg Center will present Grammya"?-winning new-music choir The Crossing in the premiere of a newly staged theatrical production, Knee Plays, on Friday, February 21, 2020 at 8pm and Saturday, February 22, 2020 at 8pm at the Harold Prince Theatre. The program, part of the Center's #GLASSFEST celebration, features a rare opportunity to hear Knee Plays from Philip Glass's Einstein on the Beach and David Byrne's New Orleans-inspired contribution to Robert Wilson's large scale project, the CIVIL warS. The premiere will be narrated by popular Philadelphia actor Dito van Reigersberg.

This concert is part of the February 2020 Composers Now Festival celebrating living composers, the diversity of their voices and the significance of their musical contributions to our society. During the month of February, the Festival brings together dozens of performances presented by venues, ensembles, orchestras, opera companies, dance companies and many other innovative events throughout New York City.

PEAK Performances presents two concerts by the United States' only professional piano sextet, Grand Band, who arrange and play six pianos in a circle. The unconventional ensemble-Erika Dohi, David Friend, Paul Kerekes, Blair McMillen, Lisa Moore, and Isabelle O'Connell-engulfs the audience in the sonic intensity of four landmark contemporary works, including the iconic and massive Gay Guerilla by late minimalist composer Julius Eastman. The Quietus describes the piece as 'one of the most moving pieces ever to be written for eight hands...beginning in lonely stuttering notes, slowly unraveling into defiant crescendos, before the final part repurposes Martin Luther's A Mighty Fortress Is Our God into a queer manifesto.'

This winter, Trinity Church Wall Street co-produces the New York premiere of REV. 23, the latest opera by its own Director of Music Julian Wachner, along with the cutting-edge Prototype Festival and Gerald W. Lynch Theater at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. Performances take place at the Gerald W. Lynch Theater in Manhattan, on January 17 at 8pm and January 18 at 3pm and 8pm. Composed to an audacious, satirical libretto by Cerise Jacobs, founder of the Boston-based activist opera company White Snake Projects, which commissioned the work, REV. 23 explores an a?oeunpublisheda?? new chapter of the Book of Revelation. Los Angeles-based director James Darrah creates a striking new production for this New York premiere, leading the audience on a fantastical journey through the myths of the collective unconscious. Noted conductor Daniela Candillari leads Trinity's in-house contemporary orchestra, NOVUS NY.

Baryshnikov Arts Center (BAC) has announced the recipient of the 2019-20 Cage Cunningham Fellow, lighting designer Jennifer Tipton. This is the fourth award of BAC's distinguished fellowship established in 2015 to support artists who embody John Cage and Merce Cunningham's commitment to artistic innovation.

The Crossing has received an extremely generous $200,000 gift from long-time friend, advocate, and supporter Thomas Kasdorf of Kalamazoo, Michigan. The extraordinary unrestricted funding will support The Crossing's 2019-2020 season, with commissions of Edie Hill, Tawnie Olsen, Gavin Bryars, Daniel Felsenfeld, Aaron Helgeson, Gabriel Jackson, and Michael Gordon at venues such as Crane Arts Icebox, the Met Cloisters, the Hal Prince Theater and Zellerbach Theaters at the Annenberg Center, Holy Trinity Rittenhouse Square, Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall, and at The Crossing's home, the Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill.

Recording Academy® President/CEO Deborah Dugan alongside Academy Chair of the Board of Trustees and renowned record producer Harvey Mason Jr., as well as GRAMMY Awards® host Alicia Keys and past two-time GRAMMY® nominee Bebe Rexha, today revealed nominees for the 62nd GRAMMY Awards in select categories. This year's nominees reflect a melting pot of artistic innovation that defined the year in music, showcasing the unparalleled craftsmanship of established artists and the industry-shifting impact of rising music creators. Leading nominees Lizzo (8), Billie Eilish (6) and Lil Nas X (6) not only topped the charts but ignited a cultural conversation around their genre-bending hits. As the only peer-selected music award, the GRAMMY Awards are voted on by the Recoding Academy's membership body of music makers, who represent all genres and creative disciplines, including recording artists, songwriters, producers, mixers and engineers.

Trinity Church Wall Street's historically informed performances of Handel's Messiah are critical favorites; just last season, the New York Times called Trinity's rendition 'the best 'Messiah' in New York.' On December 20 and 21 at 7:30pm and on December 22 at 3pm, the Grammy-nominated Choir of Trinity Wall Street, Trinity Baroque Orchestra and Director of Music Julian Wachner give three accounts of Handel's masterpiece. The performance on Saturday, December 21 at 7:30pm will be streamed live on Trinity's website and Facebook Live, and will be made available on demand the following week. Performances will take place at St. Paul's Chapel at Broadway and Fulton Street and tickets can be purchased here.