David Lang
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"There is no name yet for this kind of music," writes Mark Swed about David Lang, the provocative American composer. Lang's distinct sound fuses the tradition of classical music with urban aggressiveness, where melodies are accompanied by noise and subtle harmonies are pulled apart by pounding rhythms.
He has been commissioned by such organizations as the Santa Fe Opera, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Cleveland Orchestra, the San Francisco Symphony, the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, the BBC Singers, the Netherlands Wind Ensemble, and the American Composers Orchestra. His works are performed with regularity throughout the world by such organizations as the Kronos Quartet, the New York Philharmonic and the Los Angeles Philharmonic; at Tanglewood, the Aspen Music Festival, and the Almeida, Holland, Berlin and Huddersfield Festivals; in theater productions in New York, San Francisco and London; in the choreography of Twyla Tharp and Margaret Jenkins; and at Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center, and the South Bank Center.
Mr. Lang is co-founder and co-artistic director of Bang on a Can, an organization dedicated to adventurous new music, with presentations in New York and around the world. He is also Composer in Residence at the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco.
His awards include the Rome Prize, the BMW Music-Theater Prize (Munich), a Kennedy Center/Friedheim Award, the Revson Fellowship with the New York Philharmonic, and grants from the Guggenheim Foundation, the New York Foundation for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Born in Los Angeles in 1957, Lang holds degrees from Stanford University and the University of Iowa, receiving his doctorate from the Yale School of Music in 1989. He has studied with Jacob Druckman, Hans Werner Henze and Martin Bresnick. His work is recorded on Sony Classical, Argo/Decca and CRI.
-Deborah Artman
