Bang on a Can Launches Online Archive “Canland” 

Friday, May 1, 2020 at 12pm ET

 www.canland.org | www.bangonacan.org

Brooklyn, NY — May 1, 2020 — Bang on a Can announces the launch of its online archive Canland at www.canland.org. Since its founding in 1987, Bang on a Can has maintained an extensive collection of its recordings, videos, posters, program books, and more. Thirty-three years of music and associated ephemera has been digitized and archived online and is now publicly accessible in its entirety.

Bang on a Can co-founder and co-Artistic Director David Lang says of building Canland, “We sifted through our files and cabinets and desk drawers and old CD-roms and floppy discs for vintage pictures and programs and videos and recordings. We look so young! (As do young Philip Glass, young Meredith Monk, young Steve Reich, etc.) And it is crammed full of great stuff from recent years too, by people who look really young because they are still really young! There are some stellar performances here, lots of virtuosity and grit. And lots of images of the community of people who come out to support it. We can't be with you in person right now, but we are with you in spirit - and online!”

In tandem with the launch of Canland, Bang on a Can presents its Bang on a Can Marathon Online on Sunday, May 3, 2020 from 3pm-9pm ET, featuring six hours of LIVE music. "The emphasis on Sunday aims to be, as it always has been, on free-spirited variety, representation across musical generations and the intermingling of genres and artistic scenes," according Seth Colter Walls in The New York Times, who interviewed Lang and fellow co-founders and co-Artistic Directors Michael Gordon and Julia Wolfe to find out more about how their previous festival format has been transformed due to COVID-19.

Wolfe explains, "It really came after a lot of discussion and soul-searching about what is important. Everyone’s getting compensated. We talked about a lot of different approaches — and came back to what we do. We started with a marathon in 1987. Over the years we’ve had so many amazing soloists; the Bang on a Can All-Stars [the collective’s resident ensemble] is made up of people who appeared as soloists. So we’re very oriented toward spectacular individual players." Gordon adds, "Part of the reason it takes so long to get a physical festival together is that everyone has to come to New York... And then all of a sudden you also realize no one’s traveling. There’s no conflicts. It’s lightning speed, putting this together."

Learn more about the artists, find a full schedule, and stream the Marathon on Sunday at marathon2020.bangonacan.org.

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. For more information about Bang on a Can, please visit www.bangonacan.org.