by Marvin J. Ward

No. Adams, MA, July 2009.  Bang on a Can was founded in NYC in 1987 by a triumvirate of composers, David Lang, Michael Gordon, and Julia Wolfe, who wanted to provide an outlet for composers and musicians that sought to create and perform music outside the works offered by the mainstream classical music organizations, namely those of the Classical, Romantic, and Late-Romantic periods, for which all major music schools train their students.  During the initial discussions, Wolfe quipped that they were a bunch of composers sitting around banging on a can.  This made all 3 laugh uproariously, and they immediately settled on the name.

According to Lang, they wanted the musical experience to be something elemental, primitive, enjoyable, unexpected, whimsical, fun, more like play than work, not something erudite, scientific, dry, difficult, and scary.  They were also interested in breaking down the barriers between composer and performer, eliminating compartments, creating an empty vessel without a pre-conceived form into which they could pour what they wanted, and at the same time to get classical music into the general culture.  For 4 or 5 years, they did everything themselves, finding venues, organizing the performances, raising the money, selling tickets, cleaning up the halls afterwards, etc., etc.

A decade or so ago, they began seeking a way to do some outreach beyond the boundaries of NYC, specifically a venue with contemporary art, and, after a fortuitous connection and discussions, started the Festival and School (The banner says “Institute”) at then 2-year-old MASS MoCA (Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art), which occupies an abandoned 27-building 19th-century mill complex on 13 acres in downtown No. Adams, MA, 8 years ago.  Participants are housed in a dormitory of the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts several blocks away.  It is from all appearances a perfect match.

All 3 founders are still intimately involved in the operation, which is now a bona fide 501(c)(3) with a staff and a budget.  This year, they accepted a talented group of 35 students (also referred to as “fellows”) from an applicant pool of 200 for the 3-week intensive Institute – they work from 9 AM often to as late as 10 PM.  There are 9 composers and 26 performers from 11 countries.  According to Lang, they seek to find the individuals who are the most dedicated and excited, and for whom this experience is likely to change their lives.  Fellows may apply to return a 2nd year, but 2 seasons is the maximum allowed. The school operates on the same principles that were the group’s original goals.  The 12-member faculty is composed of both composers and performers, with many individuals wearing both hats.  Lang characterized the whole as a group of people “who are dedicated to the love and creation of very strange music.”

There are 2 daily (except Sundays) recitals in the galleries (mostly in the only one with a piano), the somewhat informal one (no chairs are set up and performers announce what they are offering) at 1:30 PM planned and performed by the fellows, and the more formal (folding chairs are set up in rows and a basic printed program is distributed) 4:30 PM one, planned by the faculty in which both students and faculty perform, always in the gallery with the piano.  There are some other major evening performances, as well, and some events outside the facility in downtown No. Adams, and the Festival always ends with a 6-hour marathon performance in which all faculty and fellows are involved.

I attended both gallery concerts on 3 consecutive days, 22-24 July.  Here is what I experienced.

On the 22nd, the student recital opened with 2 improvisations: fellows Jeffrey Young, violin, and pianist Richard Valitutto played one in which Young ended up beneath the piano tapping on its underside to produce other sonorities, and clarinetist Nathan Smith produced sounds with his bass instrument that its maker most certainly never imagined or intended it to make, ending up lying on the floor in the 2nd.  Although not specifically created with the 3 large Anselm Kiefer paintings (his works are all heavily influenced by the devastation of WW II) displayed on the 3 walls and the Joseph Beuys multi-element sculpture (illustrating  a violent lightening strike) in front of the windows of the 4th wall in mind, both seemed quite appropriate for the space.  These were followed by flutist Roberta Michel playing 3 of 4 parts of Murmurs (1998-2000) by Harold Meltzer, each part calling for a different range instrument.

The 4:30 recital in the same gallery featured 7 short works.  It opened with David Lang’s Warmth for bass clarinet (faculty member Ken Thomson) and electric guitar (faculty Derek Johnson).  It featured descending lines in and out of sync, but was too loud for my ears so I could not discern its nuances, and therefore did not seem related to its title.  Next up was We Will Sail by Kate Moore, played by faculty member Phillippa Thompson on the musical saw accompanied by faculty pianist Vicki Ray and faculty percussionist David Cossin playing a Tibetan singing bowl, a lovely, quiet, contemplative piece.  This was followed by 2 works composed for this occasion and space by faculty members.  The 1st, faculty member Brad Lubman’s Gallery 2009 for alto flute (fellow Kelli Kathman), violin (faculty Todd Reynolds), cello (faculty Lauren Radnofsky), piano (Ray) and vibes (fellow Melanie Sehman), was a melodic work, harmonic, and a pleasant blend of sounds.  The 2nd, Poem for the Rooftops, composed and performed by faculty bassist Gregg August, a work inspired by a video he saw (and showed as he played, though it was hard to discern much since it was filmed at night, and the subtitles were too low to be read) of the demonstrations in Teheran the night of 19 June following the elections, was a soulful piece that could easily stand alone, be appreciated and enjoyed in another space and without the video or knowledge of the inspiration.  The next work was also by a faculty member: clarinetist Ken Thomson’s Song, composed in 2003, for double wordless voices, 1 female (fellow Amanda DeBoer), 1 male (fellow Brian Calhoon), and 2 violins (Thompson and fellow Andie Springer).  Rather than the instruments merely accompanying the voices, with solo roles only in prelude, interludes, and postlude, as in traditional art songs, they trade off lead roles back and forth; there were sections where they sounded more fiddle than violin-like, so there was some variety in the otherwise somewhat repetitive lines.  This was followed by a harmonic a cappella work for 3 female voices (fellows DeBoer, Lindsay Kesselman, and faculty member Katie Geissinger) by Lisa Bielawa, The Boat, to a text by Gertrude Stein, which wove interestingly in and out of the 3 parts.  The closing work was Bachfeet: “Brownie, you’re doin’ a heck of a job” by Eve Beglarian, inspired by former President Bush’s comment following the Hurricane Katrina disaster in New Orleans.  It is scored for 4 wordless female voices (DeBoer, Kesselman, fellow Feruza Ochilova, and Geissinger) and percussion (Cossin), and had an appropriate jazzy feel.

On the 23rd, the 1:30 recital opened in the same gallery with 2 songs by Charles Ives: “Walt Whitman” and “Children’s Hour” performed by Valitutto and DeBoer.  Valittuto played too loudly and covered DeBoer so the words were unintelligible in the former, but found the proper volume level for the latter.  Then the audience moved to Level 2 of the Sol LeWitt exhibition in building # 7 where fellow Louise Devenish played marimba and sang some rhythmic wordless Children’s Songs in front of one end of the long Wall Drawing 413 which consists of multiple squares of 4 squares in 4 colors of ink wash.  Next, fellow Maggie Hasspacher played bass and read a work called Fragments, composed for her by a friend using texts from T. S. Eliot’s Four Quartets in front of the other end of the same Wall Drawing.  Her verbal delivery did not carry well in the space, unfortunately.  Then we moved to another area of this level, in front of Wall Drawing 793B, where fellow Kelli Kathman played a flute work composed for her by her friend Ed Rosenberg, III, Cloudless Murmur, Fantasy Murmur, melodic and flowing, the 2 sections separated by the striking of a triangle, appropriate for the wavy movements of the Drawing.

The 4:30 recital featured works by BOAC founders Michael Gordon and David Lang, beginning with the final 2 movements of the former’s 6-movement Van Gogh, which portrays the biography of the painter and was inspired by his letters to his brother Theo.  The 5th movement, “Arles” is instrumental, scored for clarinet (fellow Rafael Caldentey Crego) , percussion (Devenish), piano (fellow Kate Campbell), guitar (faculty Derek Johnson), cello (fellow Fjola Evans), bass (Hasspacher), violin (Springer), and viola (Thompson), all coached by Lubman.  It evokes the bright sunlight that dazzled Van Gogh, the frenzy with which he worked, and the ultimate crisis and breakdown.  The 6th movement, “St. Rémy,” adds 3 female voices to the instruments who sing/recite texts chant-like, many of which were unfortunately not comprehensible in spite of the amplification.  This was followed by David Lang’s Learning to Fly, a short, repetitive, percussive work that was evocative of its title, scored for flute (Kathman), clarinet (Smith), violin (Reynolds), cello (Radnofsky), piano (Valitutto) and percussion (fellow Andy Myerson).  The closing piece was Lang’s Cheating Lying Stealing, scored for the same forces according to the program (same musicians), but Kathman and Reynolds were striking percussion instruments, not playing their own.  This was too loud for my ears, reminiscent of rock music, and the relation of the music to the title escaped me, unless it was merely the rhythmic pattern.

On the 24th, the student performance opened in the LeWitt exhibition, again in front of Wall Drawing 413 – it should be mentioned that the facing wall bears Drawing 414 which is the same pattern in shades of grey produced with India ink washes, so listeners are standing between the 2 walls/Drawings.  Melanie and Steven Sehman (married) gave a smashing performance of Steve Reich’s Piano Phase on marimbas.  The audience went up to Level 3 of the exhibition for the 2nd work, which was a non-musical performance piece scattered throughout the level.  Pairs or trios of fellows argued with each other in front of the various Wall Drawings, disputing interpretations (one dispute being between a composer and a performer) or criticizing performance gaffes.  It was more planned confusion than performance.

The 4:30 recital was devoted to the music of the 3rd BOAC founder, Julia Wolfe.  The 1st work was the 1st movement of the 1st string quartet she wrote, commissioned by the Cassatt Quartet, and entitled Four Marys for multiple reasons of what the name suggests.  It was inspired by the sound of the mountain dulcimer, which has a droning and wailing aspect, conveyed in the piece.  Performers were Young, violin 1, fellow Francis Liu, violin 2, fellow Andi Hemenway viola, and faculty Nick Photinos, cello.  This was followed by Part I (of 2) of Dark Full Ride, for 4 percussionists (Calhoon, Cossin, both Sehmans), all playing cymbals.  Cossin supplied the high line for the work (commissioned for the Talujan Percussion Quartet in which he plays) and the title came from something written on the bottom of a cymbal Wolfe turned over after a rehearsal.  She said she was aiming for every sound possible on the instrument.  For the concluding piece, the audience moved to the football-field-sized exhibition building (# 5) for LAD, a work written for 9 bagpipes for a pipe band on Long Island, but here performed by 1, played by Matthew Welch, with the other 8 pre-recorded and played on tape.  So the recital ended as it began, with droning and wailing sounds, including a few that were siren-like.

Some observations: The level of performance skills in all the recitals was uniformly high; several were truly outstanding.  While many of the works are percussive, in keeping with the suggestion of the group’s name, other instruments are also involved, often in interesting combinations with percussion instruments.  Thus there is a wide variety, perhaps in fact wider than is found in music of earlier periods.  Some of the works have no discernible melody; they are dominated by the rhythm.  Many of the works have or seem to have the goal of seeing what the instrument can do.  The musicians all clearly enjoyed what they were doing, some so much so that they did not adapt their volume level to the venue, to their partners/colleagues, or to the presence of an audience.

Some reflections: To enter the general culture, some works use elements and techniques of other popular musical forms, such as jazz and rock (Young's business card offers: "Concerts & Gigs, Session work [in] Classical, Rock, Jazz, Bluegrass" for example.).  The use of the former is nothing new; it was done already nearly a century ago, but the introduction of the heavy beat and loud volume of rock music is.  I personally found this unpleasant, because I find it unpleasant in the rock context as well, but there are many (mostly younger than I) who welcome and like it, so I do not criticize or condemn it per se.  While improvisations are interesting and enjoyable, to become a work of art they must be written down so that someone else can play them; they are otherwise nothing more than ephemeral fleeting performances.  I am also personally not convinced that the experimentation with an instrument’s possibilities, while perhaps a valid pursuit, constitutes a work of musical art.  A work must be something that bears repeated listening, that makes repeated listening desirable, and some of those I heard did not do so for me.

Nonetheless, I found my immersion interesting, enlightening, exciting, and fun.  I highly recommend one, perhaps even an annual dose!