BANG on a CAN at MIT Boston-Area Premieres Of
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Press contact: Christina Jensen PR, 646.536.7864 Christina Jensen, [email protected] Canelle Boughton, [email protected] BANG ON A CAN at MIT Boston-area premieres of Julia Wolfe’s Steel Hammer performed by the Bang on a Can All-Stars & Trio Mediaeval Michael Gordon’s Timber performed by Mantra Percussion Part of Bang on a Can’s 25th Anniversary Season Saturday, November 12 at 7:30pm Kresge Auditorium | MIT | 48 Mass. Ave. | Cambridge Tickets: Gen. Adm. $20; Students $10; MIT Faculty and staff $10; MIT Students Free. Available at http://trio-bang-mantra.eventbrite.com Bang on a Can: www.bangonacan.org | Trio Mediaeval: www.triomediaeval.no Mantra Percussion: www.mantrapercussion.org | MIT Visiting Artists: http://arts.mit.edu/va Watch Steel Hammer online: www.youtube.com/watch?v=8PATlsnLgJM Watch Timber online: www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2cubmnH6MQ Cambridge, MA (October 11, 2011) — The “relentlessly inventive” (New York Magazine) new music collective Bang on a Can will embark on the second year of its three-year residency at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) with the Boston-area premieres of two works by Bang on a Can co-founders Julia Wolfe and Michael Gordon on Saturday, November 12 at 7:30pm at MIT’s Kresge Auditorium (48 Mass. Ave., Cambridge). Two world-class ensembles join forces on Julia Wolfe’s Steel Hammer featuring renowned electric chamber ensemble the Bang on a Can All-Stars and the luminous Norwegian vocal ensemble Trio Mediaeval. Michael Gordon’s Timber, recently released on Cantaloupe Music to great acclaim, will be performed by the incisive Mantra Percussion. Wolfe’s Steel Hammer is inspired by her love for the legends and music of Appalachia, and culls from both the music and oral traditions of the region. The text is taken from over 200 versions of the John Henry ballad – based on hearsay, recollection, and tall tales – and through the radiant voices of Trio Mediaeval, explores the subject of human vs. machine in this quintessential American legend. Steel Hammer was runner-up for the 2010 Pulitzer Prize and stretches the standard instrumentation of Bang on a Can All-Stars with wooden bones, mountain dulcimer, banjo, and more, to evoke the rich instrumental colors of Appalachia. The New York Times calls it a “wild hybrid” and an “obsessive study of the song’s many versions.” Gordon’s Timber is 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. The physical copies of Timber are packaged in thick 1 wooden cases, which are standard CD size in their length and width, but are made out of medium-density fiberboard, each weighing approximately one pound. Last season, with MIT as a leading partner, the Bang on a Can All-Stars anchored two critically acclaimed Boston-area performances: Evan Ziporyn’s enchanting opera A House in Bali at the Cutler Majestic Theater and MIT’s New Music Marathon a featured event of FAST, the Festival of Art, Science and Technology. Fueled by the creative energy that resulted, MIT will host the Bang on a Can All-Stars from October 2011 through April 2012 in monthly visits by the ensemble to the MIT campus for a wide range of artistic, educational, and performance activities. The residency is sponsored by MIT’s Music & Theater Arts program and supported by funding from the School of Humanities, Arts & Social Sciences. It is a major component of MIT’s burgeoning Visiting Artists Program, which brings internationally acclaimed artists to engage with MIT’s creative community in ways that are mutually enlightening for the artist and faculty, students, and research staff at the Institute. This season, Bang on a Can is celebrating its 25th anniversary with performances around the world featuring a broad selection of brand new musical adventures alongside a recommitment to acclaimed projects from past years. The Bang on a Can All-Stars tour to Boston, Los Angeles, Chicago, Amsterdam, Bordeaux, London, Moscow, Glasgow, and many other places throughout the U.S. and internationally. Projects for 2011-2012 include the All-Stars in a dizzying array of collaborations with friends old and new – joining forces with Norwegian superstars Trio Mediaeval (in Julia Wolfe’s Steel Hammer); with percussion legend Steven Schick (in an evening of music by Steve Reich in Los Angeles’s Disney Hall, featuring 2x5 and Music for 18 Musicians); with an all-new expanded live tour of Brian Eno’s ambient classic Music for Airports; and with a host of composers, visual and sound artists (in the premiere of a new evening-length touring project, Field Recordings – a collaborative program created from found sounds, images, and voices). The season also includes the premiere of a newly staged show featuring the exceptional marching band Asphalt Orchestra, new CD releases on Bang on a Can’s sister-label Cantaloupe Music including the January 2012 release of the Bang on a Can All-Stars first studio recording in five years, the 2-CD set Big Beautiful Dark and Scary, and more. See concert schedule at the end of this press release. Since its creation by composers Michael Gordon, David Lang, and Julia Wolfe, 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. In addition to the 25th anniversary of its founding, Bang on a Can is also celebrating the 20th anniversary of its electric chamber ensemble, the Bang on a Can All-Stars; the 15th anniversary of its membership-based commissioning arm, the Peoples’ Commissioning Fund; and the 10th anniversary of the Bang on a Can Summer Music Festival at MASS MoCA, a professional development program for young composers and performers which connects the pioneers of experimental music to the next generation. Each new program evolved to further expose innovative music as broadly and accessibly as possible to new audiences worldwide. “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.” About Bang on a Can Formed in 1987 by composers Michael Gordon, David Lang and Julia Wolfe, Bang on a Can is dedicated to commissioning, performing, creating, presenting and recording contemporary music. With an ear for the new, the unknown and the unconventional, Bang on a Can strives to expose exciting and innovative music as broadly and accessibly as possible to new audiences worldwide. Through its Summer Festival, Bang on a Can hopes to bring this energy and passion for innovation to a younger generation of composers and players. Projects include festival concerts and 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; Found Sound Nation, a promising new technology-based musical outreach program into NYC schools; cross-disciplinary collaborations and projects with DJs, visual artists, choreographers, filmmakers and more; and Asphalt Orchestra, Bang on a Can’s new extreme street band that offers mobile performances recontextualizing unusual music, taking it to neighborhoods across New York City and 2 beyond to the world at large. Bang on a Can’s innovative 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. About the Bang on a Can All-Stars Formed in 1992 by New York’s renowned new-music collective Bang on a Can, 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. 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.