“In 1987, Michael Gordon and Julia Wolfe and I were young composers and we would spend our days doing what young composers always do – complaining bitterly about our fate,” David explains. “The world wasn’t organised to play our music, or the music of our friends, or the music by older composers that we liked, or to get a big and curious audience, or to accept that composers were refreshing music the same way that visual artists constantly refresh visual art, or new playwrights constantly refresh the theatre. After a long while of complaining we thought that it might be better if we just tried to list all the things we wished were changed in the world, and then try to change them. That is how and why we started Bang On A Can.”
Like most great things that come to exist, Bang On A Can was something that was never meant to last for more than one concert. However, David explains that they felt it was something they needed to continue. “When we started Bang On A Can in 1987 we never thought that we would do this more than once. We did all the work ourselves and it was a lot of work, and we never intended to do it more than once. But the concert was so much fun, and the community of it meant so much to so many people that we ended up doing it again, and again. So 25 years is about 24 years more than we planned on lasting, but the truth is we aren’t nearly done yet.”
Commenting on Bang On A Can’s longevity, David says, “We are dedicated to doing everything we can to help make a healthy world for experimental music. Part of the longevity must come from the fact that we have hit a nerve someplace, that there are other people in the world who want to see this music thrive. But part of our longevity is probably also due to the fact that there is still a lot left to do, and we are still very passionate about doing it.”
The highly-anticipated 25th birthday tour won’t leave many Australian music lovers in the dark, David explaining that some Australian content is to be featured. “We are touring with a range of our favorite activities: our arrangement of Brian Eno’s ambient masterpiece Music for Airports, our centennial salute to the American maverick, rebel and philosopher John Cage, our new program of composers working with found sound elements, called Field Recordings. But what makes me happy about this tour to Australia is not only that we are coming with all this great music but that we are coming with Australian content! We commissioned a piece from the Aussie composer Kate Moore that is just out of this world, and we like it so much that we just put it on our most recent album. To play Kate’s music in Australia will be a lot of fun.”
Field Recordings is the ensemble’s new multimedia project consisting of new works from nine composers, including music from the three founding members of Bang On A Can: Michael Gordon, David Lang and Julia Wolfe. Each short piece uses pre-recorded sound and images specially created or extracted from archives to function as a launching pad, sparking an hour-long sequence abundant with intriguing sound bites and turntable effects set to challenge the conventional norms of music composition.
Commitment is imperative to any artistic endeavour. David says, “I think we are just like every other thing in the world that was built by people who love something so much that they want to spend all their time and energy doing it and improving it. When I read about psycho driven business people or super hard working athletes I feel like I understand something about them, because without the fanatical commitment it is hard to get someplace.”
BY TAMARA VOGL
