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.

BAM Blog Questionnaire: It Takes a Village

Steel Hammer—coming to the BAM Harvey Theater this Wednesday, December 2—creatively explores the cost of hard labor on the human body and soul. We spoke with four individuals involved in this collaboration—two singers, a stage manager, and two playwrights—to better understand the process involved in creating this multi-hyphenate work of new music theater.

Steel Hammer. Photo: Krannert Center

How did you get involved with Steel Hammer? What is your contribution to the piece?

KATIE GEISSINGER (singer): I'd seen the concert Steel Hammer at Zankel Hall with Trio Mediaeval in 2009, and was longing to sing it. When Julia Wolfe called because she was casting a local trio, I jumped!

CARL HANCOCK RUX (playwright): Anne Bogart (and SITI Company) contacted me and asked if I'd be interested in writing text for a new piece she was working on based on the John Henry myth. I'd long been a fan of Anne Bogart and Julia Wolfe and was thrilled to accept the invitation. I wrote the "Migrant Mamie Remembers" monologue performed by Patrice Johnson Chevannes.

ELLEN MEZZERA (stage manager): I joined Steel Hammer a few weeks before we went to Actors Theatre of Louisville in 2014 as the production stage manager.

KIA CORTHRON (playwright): Anne Bogart contacted me by email. I think we may have met in passing before that, but never formally. She asked me to be one of the contributing writers.

EMILY EAGEN (singer): I remember first discussing the piece with Julia Wolfe on the phone, and, when she described the connections the work makes between folk music and contemporary music, I got so excited! I can still remember that exact moment.

So Many John Henrys

Photo: Michael Brosilow

By Robert Jackson Wood

It’s been said that you can never sing a folk song twice. Folk songs are living organisms, the argument goes, not reproducible objects, existing to perpetually renew the contract between universal myths and the gritty particulars of our lives. Sometimes, because songs migrate and the oral tradition gets creative, those particulars work their way into the songs themselves and variations proliferate. A Scottish glen becomes a Virginia holler, a silver dagger becomes a pen knife, rosy-red lips become lily-white hands. The details change so that the myths don’t have to.

Such is the case with the “The Ballad of John Henry,” whose 200+ documented versions form the basis of Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Julia Wolfe’s work Steel Hammer and its theatrical adaptation, which comes to BAM in December. The story of John Henry is a familiar one: a spike-driving railroad worker of Bunyonesque strength beats a steam drill in a contest to bore through a mountain, only to “die with his hammer in his hands.” That folk music historian Alan Lomax called the legend “possibly America’s greatest piece of folklore” is no wonder: the mythos of the railroad, man vs. machine anxiety, bootstraps individualism—the muscular American imaginary is there in its entirety.

But the details are predictably fuzzy. Was John Henry 5’1” or 6’1”? Was his wife Polly Ann or Sally Ann? Did his hammer shine like silver or gold?