UPDATE (5/19): IT WAS A GREAT CONCERT!!!!! Okay, that's a confusing title. Composer David Lang is the co-founder of Bang on a Can, an organization that commissions, publishes and performs contemporary music. Lang won the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 2008 for The Little Matchgirl Passion. A concert of David Lang's music will be performed by the OSU New Music Collective and the OSU Percussion Ensemble on Wednesday, May 18 at 8 p.m. in OSU's Weigel Hall. The evening is sponsored by the Johnstone Fund for New Music and I'll be hosting a post concert discussion with David Lang, with plenty of time for audience questions. David Lang has a gift of blending his own music into pre-existing work. He makes old music new and creates his own new music. Tomorrow night's program features a work called Heroin based on Lou Reed: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYQasBxw7-s Intriguing, even if you missed the Velvet Underground. Lang won the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 2008 for The Little Matchgirl Passion, and I understand why. In the work, he blends Bach's St. Matthew Passion with Hans Christian Andersen! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1FbSqXNR18 Match Girl is scored for chorus and percussion. Such an original 'mix' signals a composer fascinated by combination of sounds, all types of sounds. Another work on the program is Lang's Cheating, Lying, Stealing for percussion, piano and bass clarinet: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4c6NgVKcC0Qogram I was going to say that this music does without the lush carpet of sound (Rachmaninoff! Wagner! Puccini!) loved by many of us, but on further listening I realize the carpet is very much there, and again, you just need to listen for it. Tomorrow night at OSU's Weigel Hall will be a great opportunity to hear new music, and hear from an important composer. See you there! P.S. - Here's Lang himself explaining the Bach connection in The Little Match Girl Passion: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npAwuQnz3wA
Christopher Purdy is Classical 101's early morning host, 7-10 a.m. weekdays. He is host and producer of Front Row Center – Classical 101’s weekly celebration of Opera and more – as well as Music in Mid-Ohio, Concerts at Ohio State, and the Columbus Symphony broadcast series. He is the regular pre-concert speaker for Columbus Symphony performances in the Ohio Theater.