Bang on a Can All-Stars to Preview New ‘Field Recordings’ at MASS MoCA

Bang on a Can All Stars (r-l): David Cossin - Drums and Percussion, Evan Ziporyn - Clarinets,Vicky Chow - Piano, Ashley Bathgate - Cello, Robert Black - Bass, Mark Stewart - Guitars (photo Julien Jourdes/Pascal Perich)

(NORTH ADAMS, Mass.) – On Saturday, July 21, 2012, at 8p.m., the Bang on a Can All-Stars will perform their brand-new, evening-length masterpiece, Field Recordings, with guests Nick Zammuto and Todd Reynolds, as part of the 11th annual Bang on a Can Summer Music Festival at MASS MoCA, part of Bang on a Can’s 25th birthday year.

Field Recordings is Bang on a Can’s major new project, featuring nine hot-off-the-press commissioned works by Tyondai Braxton, Mira Calix, Florent Ghys, Michael Gordon, David Lang, Christian Marclay, Todd Reynolds (performing live), Julia Wolfe, Nick Zammuto (performing live), and Evan Ziporyn (performing live).

For 135 years, recorded sound has permeated every corner of life, changing music along with everything else. Bartók and Kodály took recording devices into the hills of central Europe and modern music was never the same; rock and roll’s lineage comes from artists revealed to the world the Lomaxes, the Seegers, and other archivists. Hip-hop culture democratized sampling – popular music today is a form of musique concrète, the voices and rhythms of the past mixing with the sound of machinery and electronics.

Bang on a Can’s Field Recordings asked nine composers to go into the field of recorded sound itself – to find something old or record something new, and to respond with their own music, in dialogue with what they found.

What they found is a bridge through time, sensation, and sound – a thrilling ride from 1912 to 2012, New York to Hollywood to Las Vegas to John Cage to French Canadian folk singing to Balinese chant to Beauty Treatments, tape loops, vinyl records, and more.

With Field Recordings, 100 years of sound and imagery unfold to reveal a contemporary collective consciousness channeled through the Bang on a Can All-Stars.

 

 

 

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