On a Road Trip with Bang on A Can All-Stars

Photo by Timothy Norris, courtesy of Ford Theatres

Artistic collectives don’t often last 30 years. Artistic goals formulated and shared when artists are just starting to figure out who they are often change as they mature and find their individual voices. Egos sometimes get in the way. Outside circumstances can lead the best intentions astray. And friendships can simply fizzle out. That is what makes the journey of the three Bang on a Can composers—Michael Gordon, David Lang, and Julia Wolfe—so special. Starting from a marathon concert in a Soho gallery, they have since created hundreds of new pieces, records, productions, marathons, and summer festivals all over the world. They've won awards and mentored young musicians, sometimes together, sometimes separately. But they are still the best of friends and collaborators—on the road together, sharing the journey.

But they did not travel alone. Along the ride are some of their staunchest supporters and loyal friends—the musicians who have played their music over the years. The compositions of the Bang on A Can All-Stars—as the musicians are collectively called—have changed over the years, but the core still remains. And newcomers have become regulars. Six will perform in Road Trip, the 30th year commemorative piece: Ashley Bathgate (cello), Robert Black (bass), Vicky Chow (piano), David Cossin (percussion), Mark Stewart (electric guitar), Ken Thomson (clarinets). Here, four of them share their fondest memories and what has changed or not over the years.

In Context: the loser

A downcast piano student recounts a life lived in the shadows of a famous friend in David Lang’s the loser, coming to the 2016 BAM Next Wave Festival Sep 7—11. Context is everything, so get even closer to the show with this curated selection of related articles, sounds and videos. After you've attended the show, let us know what you thought below and by posting on social media using #theloserBAM.

In Context: The Wanderer

Jessica Lang's story ballet The Wanderer runs at BAM from December 3—6. Context is everything, so get even closer to the show with this curated selection of articles, interviews, and videos related to the production. Once you've seen it, help us keep the conversation going by telling us what you thought below.

Fail To Your Heart's Content: Courtly Love and David Lang's love fail

By Robert Jackson Wood

Modified Manesse Codex Image by Al Cofrin
referencing a 12th-century telling of the Tristan story.

Few things are more universal than songs about frustrated love, be it unfulfilled, unconsummated, or unrequited. Yet there was a time, believe it or not, when those songs would have been puzzling at best—and been downright heretical at worst.

Before the late 12th century, to speak publically of love was usually to speak of religious or political matters having little to do with the cravings of worldly desire. In the Christian world, love meant either the greater love of God binding together all things (as in "I love you, but my love for you is really an extension of God's love for the whole universe") or the related agape love shared between devout brothers and sisters in platonic union. In the political realm, love often meant something purely utilitarian—marriages entered into to produce would-be kings and political heirs or to maintain control of property. Love was largely a duty, not an indulgence.

Leave it to vagabond poet-musicians wandering the medieval French countryside to change all of that. In a fascinating instance of life imitating art, the songs of the troubadours, rife with accounts of indecent proposals and adulterous passions, helped to introduce a new, largely secular (and delightfully manic-depressive) way of talking about love into society as a whole. For the church, it was heresy. But for women, it meant having a newfound social power unheard of in the centuries before.