BANG ON A CAN @ 40
Across four decades, Bang on a Can has become an indispensable American art institution, not only working as a wellspring of and syndicate for new music but also reinvigorating foundational works of the past. When Michael Gordon, David Lang, and Julia Wolfe arrived in New York from Yale in the mid-’80s, the young composers were struck by the way that contemporary classical music felt like a closed system, a few people playing for each other with no hope of sharing it to a wider world. They changed that, beginning with the first Bang on a Can festival in New York in 1987 and extending it in most every direction imaginable for a performing-art organization: a record label, multiple festivals, a program where small donations from patrons pay for audacious commissions, a touring-and-recording band of All-Stars that have spread these sounds to the world’s far-flung places. “They have sustained what may be the most convivial vanguard in modern musical history,” Alex Ross wrote in The New Yorker. “The cult of genius has given way to a ritual of collaboration.” This year at Big Ears, Bang on a Can celebrates four decades with major works from three of its founders and three legendary composers.
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