 front man Thom Yorke.
Minimalism developed in the USA in the 1960s as a music genre that brought together what had been thought to be incompatible: it was new and experimental, while also being clear, honest and melodious. Through constant repetition, the radically simplified musical language unleashed new energies and soon became influential in genres ranging from krautrock and pop to techno.
Foreign to all musical hermetism, the Labèque sisters put the same requirement when they collaborate with the greatest note teps composers (Berio, Boesmans, Golijov or Glass) or share the stage with percussion, guitars, jazzmen and dancers. To celebrate 50 years of minimalism, they had imagined a Minimalist Dream House to house the works of the pioneers of the movement and those they influenced. They continue today by interpreting the American succession (David Lang, Caroline Shaw, Bryce Dessner), the unknown Julius Eastman, and a much anticipated creation of Thom Yorke.
Meredith Monk is honored worldwide as a composer, singer, director, choreographer, and performance pioneer. For over 50 years she has been creating genredefying work, evoking feelings, energies, and memories for which there are no words. On April 6, Monk and the Vocal Ensemble pair voice with movement, instrumentation, and video in Cellular Songs, a work inspired by biological processes of the fundamental unit of life that can serve as a prototype for human behavior in our tumultuous world.
Silent Voices: Lovestate, the third installment in the Silent Voices series, builds on the success of its earlier premieres at BAM’s Howard Gilman Opera House, National Sawdust, and Prototype Festival, in a program including stand-out works from the earlier series and new premieres. In Lovestate, a dynamic roster of composers and artists collaborate with the choristers in confronting the challenges of division and categorization, racism, sexism, immigration, threats to our environment and our understanding of truth, as we seek to affirm our vision of a more inclusive and compassionate future—a world we can all look forward to. Unifying this musically and topically broad work is the distinctively versatile and beautiful sound of the rigorously-trained singers—a chorus of culturally and socioeconomically diverse New York City young people, ages 12–18. Commissioned composers for Lovestate include: Pulitzer Prize winners David Lang and Caroline Shaw, Olga Bell, Nico Muhly, Angélica Negrón, Shara Nova, Paola Prestini, Toshi Reagon, Shaina Taub, and Bora Yoon.
Bearthoven Performs Scott Wollschleger’s American Dream, Shelley Washington’s Silk, and the world premiere of Trio by Katie Balch* at West Chester University in West Chester, Pennsylvania.
Enter into the discordant and energetically disorienting sound world of Philippe Manoury’s Ring, written for large ‘spatialised’ orchestra and extended percussion. Steel drums, timbales and anvils all feature in this new musical experience, as LSO musicians are scattered throughout the Barbican Hall.
Scriabin’s Symphony Fourth Symphony, The Poem of Ecstasy, depicts a cosmic spirit’s assent into consciousness, the ‘joy of liberated action, a divine play of worlds’ according to the composer. The piece seems to alternate between slow, unhurried languor and striving energy, all based around the composer’s new modes of tonality giving the end product an ethereal sense of musical mysticism.
Using little more than her voice and her singular vision, Meredith Monk has become nothing less than an icon. During the last half-century, she has been one of the pioneers of extended vocal techniques, not only inventing or refining many of its methods but also pushing them into pop culture itself. Breaking boundaries between music, theater, and performance art, and then between her magnetic concerts and her landmark albums for ECM, Monk “has communicated across genre boundaries long before ‘crossover’ was even a term,” as The Washington Post has noted.
Only a year after its world premiere at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Monk returns to Big Ears with a rare performance of her latest concert-length work, Cellular Songs. Cellular Songs examines life on the microscopic level, exploring and expressing biological processes like cell division and genetic mutation through the ineffable talents of her Vocal Ensemble and a stage show of video, lights, and theater. Monk and her cadre of singers build an overwhelming array of music from tiny sounds that bend and move at will, just as a body is built from millions of cells interacting on their own terms. It makes no matter that Monk is a MacArthur fellow, a recipient of the National Medal of Arts, and an Obie winner—her music remains at the cutting edge of contemporary art, an attempt to articulate phenomenon and feelings with which even language can sometimes struggle.
When Theatre of Voices performed Stockhausen’s epic Stimmung at Carnegie Hall, The New York Times praised the ensemble's performance as “confident and luminous, controlled yet free …” Theatre of Voices returns to give the New York premiere of an Arvo Pärt work accompanied with a film by award-winning Danish director Phie Ambo. Paul Hillier, Theatre of Voices' artistic director, conducted the world premiere of David Lang’s the little match girl passion and the ensemble recorded it to tremendous acclaim. Both reacquaint themselves with Lang’s music in the writings—the world premiere of the complete cycle.
The Monteverdi Chamber Choir Utrecht sings David Lang's "The little match girl passion". On 17 March, the Monteverdi Kamerkoor Utrecht will sing a Passion concert in the Abbey Church in Loosduinen, which clearly differs from most of the Passion Concerts.
With innovative multi-genre original productions, sensational interpretations of modern classics, and an “exhilarating blend of precision and anarchy, rigor and bedlam” (The New Yorker), Sō Percussion has redefined the scope and vital role of the modern percussion ensemble. Programmed for curious audiences, their inventive repertoire and instrumentation spans anything between a snare drum and a flower pot.
The UCLA Chamber Singers presents one of the most celebrated choral works of the last twenty years. David Lang’s Pulitzer and Grammy winning masterpiece reinvents the sounds of the choir while telling the tragic story of the nameless match girl. The concert will be in the beautiful acoustic and space of the St. Albans Church, Westwood.
A sensational modern opera, The Second Violinist is a brooding thriller electrified by an otherworldly, almost compulsive score. This is the result of an artistic partnership between world-renowned Irish playwright Enda Walsh – co-author of Bowie’s musical Lazarus – and composer Donnacha Dennehy.
The Second Violinist is about an ordinary person whose life is ruled by social media, morbid fantasies and violent video games. Seeking solace and beauty in a grim world, the violin player turns to the music of Italian Renaissance composer Carlo Gesualdo, only to have it become an obsession. The Second Violinistwon the prestigious FEDORA–GENERALI award in 2017.
The San Francisco Girls Chorus builds upon its award-winning commitment to music of our time with a concert featuring works from a group of luminary contemporary composers. Highlighted by the World Premiere performance of an SFGC commission from avant-rock and improvisational composer Fred Frith, the program includes music by American minimalist Steve Reich, film composer David Lang, jazz saxophonist John Zorn, and prominent Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho. The chorus will be joined by contralto Kristen Sollek, who will make her SFGC debut as soloist in Vaughan Williams’ rarely heard Magnificat.
The acclaimed contemporary string quartet ETHEL performs the complete string quartets of Pulitzer prize winning composer Julia Wolfe: Dig Deep, Early that Summer, Four Marys, and Blue Dress for String Quartet. This is the first performance of all of Wolfe's string quartets at one time, on one stage.
David Lang’s Pulitzer Prize-winning oratorio based on the Hans Christian Andersen story will feature some of Seattle’s finest soloists in a concert that includes new choral works for the full ensemble.
Leonard Slatkin brings the American Music festival to a close with works by Kristin Kuster, Barber’s haunting Violin Concerto, Bernstein’s West Side Story, and the startling silence of John Cage on Thursday and Friday. On Saturday and Sunday, minimalist percussion masterworks of Steve Reich and Philip Glass, plus John Luther Adams’s visionary Pulitzer Prize-winning Become Ocean.
Two piano prodigies at a master class encounter an even greater talent: the virtuoso Glenn Gould, on the cusp of superstardom. The devastating realization that they will never approach their new rival’s level of artistry changes their lives forever. A painful meditation on dreams forsaken and hopes unrealized unfolds in an unusually intimate staging that incorporates multiple levels of the spectacular Theatre at Ace Hotel. Composer David Lang returns to LA Opera for the first time since his spellbinding anatomy theater. (Note: as was the case with anatomy theater, the title of the loser is spelled in lowercase.) In an intimate work for baritone, piano and chamber ensemble, the loser stars Rod Gilfry, in a role he created for the work’s premiere at the pathbreaking