Bang on a Can Livestreams Terry Riley's In C from Berlin with Sasha Waltz & Guests; releases 139 Virtual Marathon Performances On-Demand

[Note: Photo of the Bang on a Can All-Stars by Peter Serling available in high resolution at www.jensenartists.com/bang-on-a-can.]

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Press contact: Maggie Stapleton, Jensen Artists
646.536.7864 x2, maggie@jensenartists.com

Bang on a Can Announces Upcoming Livestreams and On-Demand Videos

Bang on a Can All-Stars on Tour in Berlin
Performing with Celebrated German Dance Company Sasha Waltz & Guests
World Premiere of In C with Live Music
Livestream on Sunday, December 12, 2021 at 12pm ET

Plus 139 Performances from Eight Online Marathons Now Available On-Demand 

First Fridays with Robert Black Monthly Livestream Concert Series Continues
Featuring Bang on a Can All-Stars’ Bassist 

All Streaming at live.bangonacan.org

Brooklyn, NY — Bang on a Can announces its upcoming livestreams and on-demand programming, all streaming at live.bangonacan.org. All shows are free to watch, but viewers are encouraged to consider purchasing a ticket to help support the performers and commissioned composers.

In C: Sunday, December 12, 2021 at 12pm ET, livestreamed at live.bangonacan.org

On December 10-12, 2021 at radialsystem Berlin, the Bang on a Can All-Stars will give their first performances abroad since the pandemic. Celebrated German dance company Sasha Waltz & Guests present their latest work, In C, for the first time with live music, performed by the Bang on a Can All-Stars. In C is a brand new dynamic dance work based on Terry Riley’s revolutionary and open composition by the same name. Sasha Waltz and her dancers developed choreographic material that mirrors the variable structure of the original score and therefore always leaves room for new variants.

Sasha Waltz explains her vision for the project: “The score of In C consists of fifty-three musical phrases and reads like stage directions for musicians. The thought of translating these detailed instructions into dance through a choreographic exploration of the music appealed to me. The result is an experimental system of fifty-three movement phrases for a structured improvisation with clear rules and laws. The length of the piece remains variable, as does the number of musicians and dancers.”

This premiere with live music follows the company’s online premiere of In C on a livestream in March 2021, set to the Bang on a Can All-Stars’ 2001 recording of the work.  

139 Performances from Eight Online Marathons Now Available On-Demand at live.bangonacan.org 

Between May 2020 and June 2021, Bang on a Can presented eight Online Bang on a Can Marathons featuring 70 world premiere commissions and dozens more exclusive, unique performances from today's most brilliant players and makers, plus conversations with the artists hosted by Bang on a Can co-founders Michael Gordon, David Lang, and Julia Wolfe. Bang on a Can has recently released 139 performances and conversations in one place, available to watch on-demand. 

Some highlights include performances by legends such as Meredith Monk, Roscoe Mitchell, Rhiannon Giddens live from Ireland, Terry Riley live from Japan; solo sonic adventures featuring pianists Vijay Iyer, Conrad Tao, Lara Downs and Tyshawn Sorey, guitarist-composers Bill Frisell and Nels Cline, flautist-composers Nathalie Joachim and Nicole Mitchell, bassoon extraordinaries Rebekah Heller, Maya Stone, and Dana Jessen; vocalists Anthony Roth Costanzo and Pamela Z; plus multiple world premiere performances by each of the Bang on a Can All-Stars as soloists and 100 others. A full list of the Pandemic solo commissions by composer can be found here: https://live.bangonacan.org/premieres-commissions

First Fridays with Robert Black Monthly Concert Series Continues, livestreamed at live.bangonacan.org

First Fridays with Robert Black began in October 2020 as a monthly series of virtual mini-concerts presented by Bang on a Can. The concerts feature brand new, recently new, and kind of new music for solo double bass – streaming from Bang on a Can All-Star Robert Black’s home studio in Hartford, Connecticut, at 12pm ET. The performance is designed to fit any time and place – whether it’s with morning coffee in Los Angeles, lunch in New York, happy hour in Paris, or a late supper in Tashkent.

Upcoming dates and programs: 

Friday, December 3, 2021 at 12pm ET
Strange Places
Michael Gordon: Paint It Black (1988/91)
John Luther Adams: Three High Places (2017) 

Friday, January 7, 2022 at 12pm ET
New Faces
Kate Bodor: Fantasizing About Quitting My Day Job (2021)
Eliot Burke: blue and black marks awhwart the weald (2021)
Hannah Selin: tributaries I (2021)
Nyokabi Kariuki: One, Your Name (2020) 

Friday, February 4, 2022 at 12pm ET
Multi-Bass
Angélica Negrón: La Isla Mágica
Julia Wolfe: Stronghold 

Friday, March 4, 2022 at 12pm ET
Music and Poetry 
Philip Glass: The Not Doings of an Insomniac (2018)

About the Bang on a Can All-Stars: Formed in 1992, 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. The group’s celebrated projects include their landmark recordings of Brian Eno’s ambient classic Music for Airports and Terry Riley’s In C, as well as live performances with Philip Glass, Meredith Monk, Don Byron, Iva Bittova, Thurston Moore, Owen Pallett and others. The All-Stars were awarded Musical America’s Ensemble of the Year and have been heralded as “the country’s most important vehicle for contemporary music” by the San Francisco Chronicle.

Current and recent project highlights include a recording of legendary composer/performer Meredith Monk’s MEMORY GAME; Road Trip, an immersive and visually stunning concert collaboratively-composed by Michael Gordon, David Lang, and Julia Wolfe to commemorate the 30 year journey of Bang on a Can; the touring performances and recording of Julia Wolfe’s Pulitzer Prize winning Anthracite Fields for the All-Stars and guest choir, the record release of Wolfe’s acclaimed Steel Hammer, featuring Trio Mediaeval, plus a moving theatrically staged collaboration with SITI Company and director Anne Bogart; Field Recordings, a major multi-media project and CD/DVD now featuring 30 commissioned works by Tyondai Braxton, Mira Calix, Anna Clyne, Bryce Dessner, Florent Ghys, Michael Gordon, Jóhann Jóhannsson, David Lang, Christian Marclay, Steve Reich, Todd Reynolds, Julia Wolfe, and more; the Lincoln Center Festival 2017 world premiere of Cloud River Mountain, a new collaboration featuring Chinese superstar singer Gong Linna; the world premiere performance and recording of Steve Reich’s 2×5 including a sold-out performance at Carnegie Hall, and much more. With a massive repertoire of works written specifically for the group’s distinctive instrumentation and style of performance, the All-Stars have become a genre in their own right. The All-Stars record on Cantaloupe Music and have released past recordings on Sony, Universal and Nonesuch.

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 March 2020, when the pandemic began, Bang on a Can responded with the Live Online concert series including its signature Marathon concerts. With this online series, Bang on a Can has been able to support composers and performers and engage audiences throughout the pandemic shutdown. Other in-person programs include two 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 at www.canland.org. For more information about Bang on a Can, please visit www.bangonacan.org. 

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