July 31 and Aug. 1: Bang on a Can presents Two Concerts with Audiences at MASS MoCA

Bang on a Can and MASS MoCA Present

Bang on a Can & Friends with Don Byron and Zoë Keating

2 Nights of Live In-Person Music!

Friday, July 31 & Saturday, August 1 @ MASS MoCA

Courtyard D | 1040 MASS MoCA Way | North Adams, MA  

Extremely Limited Tickets Available ($35 for one night / $60 for both nights) on sale Wednesday, July 22, 2020 at www.massmoca.org/event/bang-on-a-can-friends 

More information: friends2020.bangonacan.org

New York, NY & North Adams, MA — Bang on a Can and MASS MoCA announce Bang on a Can & Friends – two nights of LIVE in-person music under the Berkshire stars – on Friday, July 31 and Saturday, August 1, 2020 at 8:30pm, at MASS MoCA in North Adams, MA. With a maximum capacity of 100 people, the concerts will be held outside in MASS MoCA’s spacious Courtyard D and concert goers will be required to wear masks and practice social distancing. Bang on a Can Co-Founders and Artistic Directors Michael Gordon, David Lang, and Julia Wolfe say: 

MASS MoCA is now reopened to the public and we are ecstatic!  For the 21st year in a row, Bang on a Can is thrilled to be partnering with MASS MoCA, bringing our boundary-busting concerts to the Berkshires.

We've got the ever-dedicated and dynamic Bang on a Can All-Stars, with special guests Don Byron, Zoë Keating, Gregg August and Todd Reynolds and music by Louis Andriessen, Philip Glass, Michael Gordon, Thurston Moore, Steve Reich, and Julia Wolfe. Hope to see you there!  

Bang on a Can & Friends Programs: 

Friday, July 31, 8:30pm 

Steve Reich’s Electric Counterpoint, performed by Mark Stewart

Todd Reynolds’ Outerborough, performed by Todd Reynolds

Gregg August’s Trio for Violin, Piano and Bass (with acknowledgements to Yambú, Guaguanco and Abakua), performed by Gregg August, Vicky Chow, Todd Reynolds

Philip Glass’ Piano Etudes (selections), performed by Vicky Chow

Zoë' Keating, solo set

Saturday, August 1, 8:30pm 

Robert Black, Possessed solo improvisation

Julia Wolfe’s Compassion, performed by Vicky Chow

Michael Gordon's Light Is Calling, performed by Arlen Hlusko

Don Byron, solo set

Louis Andriessen's Workers Union, performed by the Bang on a Can All-Stars

Thurston Moore's Stroking Piece #1, performed by the Bang on a Can All-Stars

Program Notes

Steve Reich’s Electric Counterpoint, performed by Mark Stewart

“Electric Counterpoint  was originally composed for guitarist Pat Metheny as the third in a series of pieces (first Vermont Counterpoint for flute followed by New York Counterpoint for clarinet) all dealing with a soloist playing against a pre-recorded tape of themselves. In Electric Counterpoint the soloist pre-records as many as ten guitars and two electric bass parts and then plays the final eleventh guitar part live against the tape. I would like to thank Pat Metheny for showing me how to improve the piece in terms of making it more idiomatic for the guitar.” – Steve Reich

Todd Reynolds’ Outerborough, performed by Todd Reynolds

“Outerborough is the title track on my 2011 double CD release of the same name on Innova Recordings. It was the first piece conceived on the record, a result both of my first residential move to the Northern Berkshires, and a collaboration with filmmaker Bill Morrison, a longtime collaborator of members of Bang on a Can and one of America’s greatest interpreters of archival footage.” – Todd Reynolds

Gregg August’s Trio for Violin, Piano and Bass (with acknowledgements to Yambú, Guaguanco and Abakua) performed by Vicky Chow, Todd Reynolds, Gregg August

“My deep interest in Cuban music has led me to visit the island eight times, beginning in 1999. The richness of their music, specifically the folkloric traditions, inspired me both as a bassist and as a composer. The Trio for Violin, Piano and Bass is a cross-disciplinary work, where I integrate some of the melodic chants and complex polyrhythms found in Cuban rumba, and place them in a classical music setting.” – Gregg August 

Philip Glass’ Piano Etudes (selections), performed by Vicky Chow

“Most of Philip Glass’ Piano Etudes were composed in 1994 largely in response to Glass’ need for repertoire for his solo piano concerts (though there were other motivations at play as well).  For almost two decades Glass was the only person who performed this music. While a few pianists including Dennis Russell Davies for whom the first handful of Etudes were written, Bruce Brubaker, and a few others got their hands on the music and were given permission to perform and record the work, it really wasn’t until Glass set about completing, editing, and overseeing the first complete recording around 2012-14 that the composer finally had to come to terms with this idea that this body of work which began as pieces written for himself (Book 1), had now grown into something more.” – Richard Guerin 

Zoë Keating, solo

Armed with a cello, a microphone and a foot controlled laptop, Zoë' will perform a selection of her intricate live-looped and layered works. Her music and methods have inspired a generation of DIY classically trained artists to bypass traditional modes of entry into the realm of new music. This performance will show off the music that has made her a beloved figure in post-classical composition and performance.

Robert Black, Possessed  solo improvisation

Music born in the wild, rugged, and dry desert canyon lands of southeastern Utah comes to the sophisticated, genteel, and verdant Berkshires.

Julia Wolfe’s Compassion, performed by Vicky Chow

“I wrote Compassion shortly after 9/11. I was standing near the towers with my family when the first plane struck. It is impossible to describe the emotions of that day. Compassion is the first work that I wrote following this tragic event. I would go on to write two more works in response (Big Beautiful Dark and Scary, and My Beautiful Scream). Compassion was commissioned by pianist Sarah Cahill in honor of the composer Ruth Crawford Seeger. The name Ruth means compassion. The title is for her name, as well as a response to the time.” – Julia Wolfe 

Michael Gordon’s Light Is Calling, performed by Arlen Hlusko

“I wrote Light Is Calling in my studio on Desbrosses Street in the days and months after September 11, 2001. I live close to Ground Zero, and I wanted to make something beautiful after witnessing something ugly and tragic. The piece juxtaposes the sound of an acoustic cello with warped electronic pulses played backwards.” – Michael Gordon 

Don Byron, solo

For over 20 years, Don Byron has been a frequent collaborator of Bang on a Can – touring and recording with the All-Stars, and as a featured guest at Bang on a Can’s Summer Festival at MASS MoCA. For this show he will be performing some of his own original tunes, as well as songs by legendary composers he has selected especially for this performance.

Louis Andriessen’s Workers Union, performed by the Bang on a Can All-Stars

“Bang on a Can has played a number of works by Louis Andriessen over the years – it has always seemed to us that he is one of the European composers who listened hard to American music, coming up with his own solutions to our national musical problems. In America of the 1960s there were many composers who were experimenting with open forms – pieces that left something unspecified, like the choice of instruments, or the order of musical ideas, or the coordination of the individual parts. Cage’s experiments with indeterminacy, Earle Brown’s Available Forms, Frederic Rzewski’s Coming Together, Terry Riley’s In C, early Philip Glass and John Adams – a lot of composers were trying to find out how to take the controls away from making music. Workers Union (1975) is the young(ish) Louis Andriessen’s contribution to this approach. Everything is specified in this piece except the notes – the rhythms, the phrases, the attitude are all there, but not the notes. It is clearly a piece that owes something to the American experimental tradition but what that thing is is hard to hear. To me, that’s interesting.” – David Lang

Thurston Moore’s Stroking Piece #1, performed by the Bang on a Can All-Stars

Stroking Piece #1 was written as a fairly typical example of a mid-period Sonic Youth-centric guitar instrumental: an episode of dynamic build with resultant tone-shards culminating in a noise improvisation/meditation released into repetition as thought-stroke release. When the All-Stars  played it in Poland once, the great Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki turned to them  and said “that is a very pure piece of music.” 

For artist bios and more, visit: friends2020.bangonacan.org 

Meanwhile, accessible from anywhere in the world, Bang on a Can continues its series of six-hour online Marathons, streaming live on Sunday, August 16, 2020 from 3pm-9pm ET at marathon2020.bangonacan.org. Highlights of this third online Marathon of 2020 include Wu Man, one of the world’s foremost Pipa players; György Ligeti’s diabolical piano etude The Devil’s Staircase, performed by Jeremy Denk; a solo performance by jazz legend Oliver Lake; eleven world premieres commissioned especially for the day; as well as music and performances by Leyla McCalla, Kaki King, Annea Lockwood, Craig Taborn, Missy Mazzoli, Tyondai Braxton and many more.

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. Bang on a Can has also recently launched its new digital archive, CANLAND, an extensive archive of its recordings, videos, posters, program books, and more. Thirty-three years of collected music and associated ephemera have been digitized and archived online and is publicly accessible in its entirety. For more information about Bang on a Can, please visit www.bangonacan.org.

About MASS MoCA: MASS MoCA is one of the world’s liveliest centers for making and enjoying today’s most evocative art. With vast galleries and a stunning collection of indoor and outdoor performing arts venues, MASS MoCA is able to embrace all forms of art: music, sculpture, dance, film, painting, photography, theater, and new, boundary-crossing works of art that defy easy classification. Much of the work we show in our light-filled spaces, on our technically sophisticated stages, and within our lovely network of late 19th-century courtyards is made here during extended fabrication and rehearsal residencies that bring hundreds of the world’s most brilliant and innovative artists to North Adams all year round.