David Lang is the recipient of the 2008 Pulitzer Prize in Music for The Little Match Girl Passion, commissioned by Carnegie Hall for the vocal ensemble Theatre of Voices, directed by Paul Hillier. One of America’s most performed and honored composers, his recent works include writing on water for the London Sinfonietta, with libretto and visuals by English filmmaker Peter Greenaway; The Difficulty of Crossing a Field – a fully staged opera for the Kronos Quartet; Loud Love Songs, a concerto for the percussionist Evelyn Glennie, and the oratorio Shelter, with co-composers Michael Gordon and Julia Wolfe, at the Next Wave Festival of the Brooklyn Academy of Music, staged by Ridge Theater and featuring the Norwegian vocal ensemble Trio Mediaeval.

Lang provides the score for (Untitled), a major independent feature about a composer's life. He writes: "Most of the time film music is in the background, setting the mood or advancing the story in a supporting role. This project was different. Because the leading character is a composer, it is a film as much about musical development as it is about character development. There is the music that surrounds him, the music he composes and performs, the music that comes out of him as the complexity of his emotional life deepens and grows." The soundtrack combines music composed especially for the film with excerpts compiled from his entire discography on Cantaloupe Music. Edited and produced with Lawson White, (Untitled)'s soundtrack serves as perfect introduction to Lang's work, a mid-career retrospective of sorts for this composer's composer. For information on (Untitled), please visit: http://www.untitled-themovie.com/.

Lang is co-founder and co-artistic director of New York's legendary music festival, Bang on a Can, along with Julia Wolfe, a composer whose music is muscular and kinetic and experienced through the body. She creates journeys like unfolding dramatic landscapes, a music meant to be entered into by the listener. Wolfe's work is distinguished by this intense focus on sound, the power of sound, the ways in which sound is related to memory and experience, the possibilities for new harmonies between familiar chords and micro tonal tunings or sounds found in nature and the urban world. Julia Wolfe's music is heard around the world in performances at the Next Wave Festival at BAM, the Sydney Olympic Arts Festival, Settembre Musica, the Holland Festival, Theatre de la Ville, the San Francisco Symphony, The Brooklyn Philharmonic, and more. Upcoming works include FUEL for Ensemble Resonanz, with a film by Bill Morrison, and an evening length work with film for the Bang on a Can All-Stars.

Hailed as “a deft young group gaining attention” (Alex Ross, The New Yorker) and "a smart young chamber group that straddles a line between contemporary classical music and indie rock," (John Schaefer, WNYC), NOW Ensemble is a collection of performers and composers dedicated to making new chamber music for the 21st century. With a unique instrumentation of flute (Alex Sopp/Andrew Rehrig), clarinet (Sara Budde), electric guitar (Mark Dancigers), double bass (Logan Coale), and piano (Michael Mizrahi), NOW Ensemble brings a fresh sound and a new perspective to the classical tradition, infused with a blend of musical influences that reflects the diverse backgrounds and listening experiences of their members. NOW has premiered over 50 works, including those by composer-members Patrick Burke, Mark Dancigers, and Judd Greenstein, along with many more by a cross-section of the top young voices in contemporary composition, such as Ryan Brown, David T. Little, Missy Mazzoli, Nico Muhly, and dozens more. NOW Ensemble has performed at a wide variety of venues, such as the Bang on a Can Marathon, the Festival Internacional de Chihuahua, Pittsburgh's Music on the Edge, the Carlsbad Music Festival, Sarasota's New Music New College, Wordless Music, and Look & Listen; in New York, they can regularly be heard at diverse venues such as Le Poisson Rouge, Joe's Pub, Galapagos Art Space and the Chelsea Art Museum, as well as on WNYC radio. Their first album, NOW, was released in 2008 to rave reviews around the country, including on AllMusic.com (five stars): "a first-class debut...more of this is demanded, not requested." Newsweek's Seth Colter Walls wrote, "NOW... imports a catchy inflection to classical forms... Striking a balance between the old and the new has rarely sounded this good.”Their self-titled debut album is available now through New Amsterdam Records.

Listen: NOW, "Folk Music"


Listen: NOW, "How About Now"

Julia Wolfe has written a major body of work for strings, with pieces commissioned by the Lark, Ethel, Kronos, and Cassatt quartets. Three of her quartets - Dig Deep, Four Marys, and Early That Summer - can be heard on the disc Julia Wolfe: The String Quartets. As described by the New Yorker, these one-movement works "combine the violent forward drive of rock music with an aura of minimalist serenity [and] use the four instruments as a big guitar, whipping psychedelic states of mind into frenzied and ecstatic climaxes." My Beautiful Scream, a string quartet concerto, was written for Kronos Quartet and the Orchestre National de France and was premiered in the US at the Cabrillo Festival under the direction of Marin Alsop. The work was inspired by the idea of a slow motion scream and was written shortly after September 11, 2001. The influence of pop culture can be heard in many of Wolfe's works, including Lick and Believing for the Bang on a Can All-Stars. Lick, based on fragments of funk, has become a manifesto for the new generation of pop-influenced composers. The raucous My Lips From Speaking for six pianos was inspired by the opening riff of the Aretha Franklin tune Think. Wolfe's Dark Full Ride is an obsessive and relentless exploration of the drum set, beginning with an extended hi-hat spotlight. In LAD, Wolfe creates a kaleidoscopic landscape for nine bagpipes. Wolfe has also composed for Anna Deveare Smith's House Arrest and won an Obie award for her score to Ridge Theater's Jennie Richie. Wolfe recently created the city-wide spectacle Travel Music with architects DillerScofidio+Renfro in Bordeaux, France, filling the streets of the old city with 100 musicians walking and riding in pedi-cabs. Julia Wolfe's music has been heard at BAM, the Sydney Olympic Arts Festival, Settembre Musica (Italy), Theatre de la Ville (Paris), Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall, and has been recorded on Cantaloupe, Teldec, Point/Universal, Sony Classical, and Argo/Decca. Recent projects include Steel Hammer - an evening length art ballad for Trio Mediaeval and the Bang on a Can All-Stars that premiered at Zankel Hall this past season. Upcoming projects include the New York premieres of Wolfe's string orchestra works Cruel Sister and FUEL performed by Signal at the Miller Theater on February 3, 2011. New works coming up are for Monica Germino, Evelyn Glennie, the Asko Ensemble, Ethel, and a percussion concerto for Collin Currie. Her CD Dark Full Ride, with works for 9 bagpipes, 4 drumsets, 6 pianos, and 8 double basses, was released on the Cantaloupe label in November 2009. Wolfe joined the NYU Steinhardt School’s composition faculty in the fall of 2009. She is co-founder of New York's music collective Bang on a Can.
juliawolfemusic.com

Known as “a masterful tunesmith” (Troy Collins, AllAboutJazz.com) with “a fresh take on what a jazz big band can do” (Peter Hum, Ottawa Citizen), Darcy James Argue is one of the most visible young composers in jazz. Critics have credited him with developing “a nearly perfect creative synthesis between tradition and innovation” (John Eyles, BBC.com), calling his compositions “ambitious, sprawling, mesmerizing” (Juan Rodriguez, Montreal Gazette) and noting his “big, broad musical vocabulary” (Ben Ratliff, New York Times). Time Out New York’s Hank Shteamer adds, “Argue draws on the full spectrum of modern rock, jazz and classical music” in a way that “handily transcends pastiche.”

A native of Vancouver, and former member of the Montreal jazz scene, Argue moved to New York in 2003 after studying with legendary composer Bob Brookmeyer. Since 2005, he has led his own 18-piece big band, Secret Society, in regular performances around the city at a diverse range of venues, including Le Poisson Rouge, the Jazz Gallery, and the Bowery Poetry Club. Secret Society evokes an alternate musical history in which the dance orchestras that ruled the Swing Era never went extinct, but remained a popular and vital part of the evolving musical landscape. Adopting a steampunk-inspired attitude towards the traditional big band, Argue refashions this well-worn instrumentation into a cutting-edge ensemble.

The band’s debut recording, Infernal Machines (New Amsterdam Records), which takes its name from a John Philip Sousa quote about the dangers of music technology, was released in May 2009 to widespread acclaim. Newsweek’s Seth Colter Walls praised it as “a wholly original take on big band’s past, present and future” and Time Out New York’s David R. Adler awarded it five stars and proclaimed it “a seven-track marvel of imagination.” In his feature article on Argue for the Village Voice, Richard Gehr called it “maximalist music of impressive complexity and immense entertainment value, in your face and then in your head.”

Listen: Darcy James Argue's Secret Society's performance at LPR from 7/15/09


Listen: "Phobos"


Listen: "Zeno"