The season has begun for Bang on a Can

The founders of Bang on a Can have been busy, and it looks like the fall season is starting in a big way for David Lang, Michael Gordon and Julia Wolfe.  Below are some concerts coming up in Boston, New York, Los Angeles, Palo Alto and Cleveland, which are all worth checking out.

Sunday, October 3:  Music of Julia Wolfe performed by Robert Black and the Hartt Bass Band, JACK Quartet, and Matthew Welch at Le Poisson Rouge.  Wait, that was last night, sorry – whoops. Well, even though it’s too late to check out that concert, I wanted to give a tip-of-the-hat to Julia for a truly satisfying and earsplitting(!) concert last night.  She started off the evening by saying that the program was full of rarely performed music, and understandably so.  She told us that Dig Deep is her least performed quartet, and then JACK promptly tore it apart (in a good way).  She also mentioned how hard it is to get eight great contrabasses in the same place to perform Stronghold and how difficult it would be to find the right bagpiper for LAD if not for Matthew Welch.  Completely worth the wait.

Don’t worry though, there is still plenty of time to check out Julia (and Michael and David) this fall at these concerts that haven’t passed, yet.

For those of you in New York:
Thursday, October 7: David Lang’s score for the latest ballet by New York City Ballet Principal Dancer Benjamin Millepied will premiere at New York City Ballet’s Gala Performance. A repeat performance will take place on October 10 (plus four performances in February 2011).

Friday, October 8: The Kronos Quartet and the Young People’s Chorus of New York will perform the world premiere of Exalted by Michael Gordon at LPR.

Saturday, October 9: Michael Gordon will be performed AGAIN by Kronos in the New York premiere of Clouded Yellow, again at LPR.

For those of you in Los Angeles:
Tuesday, October 19: David, Michael AND Julia will all be part of the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s Green Umbrella series.

Peeking into November, for those of you near Palo Alto:
Friday, November 5: The All-Stars will be performing pieces by both David and Julia at the Dinkelspiel Auditorium at Stanford University.

And finally, again in November, for those of you in Cleveland:
Saturday, November 13: David Lang will be featured at the Cleveland Museum of Art by the Oberlin Contemporary Ensemble with the Ohio premiere of his Pulitzer Prize-winning the Little Match Girl Passion.

Of course there is also Evan Ziporyn’s opera extravaganza, A House in Bali, coming up in Boston and New York – more on that in another post.