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born in 1957 in Los Angeles, he holds degrees from
Stanford University and the University of Iowa, as well as a doctorate from
the Yale School of Music (1989). He has studied with Jacob Druckman, Hans
Werner Henze and Martin Bresnick. His honours include the Prix de Rome, the
bmw Music-Theater Prize (Munich), a Kennedy Center/Friedheim Award, and the
Revson Fellowship with the New York Philharmonic. He has held grants from
the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York
Foundation for the Arts and the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In
1999 he received a Bessie Award for his music for choreographer Susan
Marshall’s The Most Dangerous Room in the House. His opera The Carbon
Copy Building won the 2000 Village Voice obie Award for Best New American
Work.
He has received commissions from the Santa Fé Opera, the Boston Symphony
Orchestra, the Cleveland Orchestra, the San Francisco Symphony, the St Paul
Chamber Orchestra, bbc Singers, and the American Composers’ Orchestra.
His works have been performed by the ‘Kronos’ Quartet and the
New York Philharmonic, at contemporary music festivals in Aspen, Berlin,
Huddersfield and Tanglewood, the ‘Almeida’ Festival, the Sidney
2000 Olympic Arts Festival, the Holland Festival and the bbc Proms.
His output also includes incidental music for theatre productions in New
York, San Francisco and London (in collaboration with choreographers of such
ensembles as ‘La La La Human Steps’, The Neder-lands Dans
Theater, and The Alvin Alley Company). Lang is co-founder and co-artistic
director of New York’s legendary music festival, Bang on a Can, and
Composer-in-Residence at the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco.
His works have been recorded on the Sony Classical, bmg, Point, Chandos,
Argo/Decca, cri and Cantaloupe labels.
Selected works (since 1984): By Fire for mixed choir
(1984), Eating Living Monkeys for orchestra (1985), Spud for chamber
ensemble (1986), Are You Experienced? for narrator, solo tuba and
instrumental ensemble (1987–88), Hammer Amour for piano and
instrumental ensemble (1979; 1989), Judith and Holofernes, puppet opera
(libretto by the composer; 1989), Orpheus Over and Under for piano duo
(1989), Bonehead for orchestra (1990), International Business Machine for
orchestra (1990), The Anvil Chorus for percussion (1990), Vent for flute and
piano (1990), Hunk of Burnin’ Love for instrumental ensemble (1991),
Press Release for bass clarinet or solo bassoon (1991), Fire and Forget for
string orchestra (1992), Bitter Herb for cello and orchestra (1992), Cage
for piano (1992), Face So Pale for six pianos (1992), My Evil Twin for
instrumental ensemble (1992), Cheating, Lying, Stealing for chamber ensemble
(1993), Music for Gracious Living for narrator and string quar-
tet (1993), Slow Movement for amplified instrumental ensemble
(1993), Street for instrumental ensemble (1993), Thorn for solo flute
(1993), Three Memory Pieces for piano (1992–94), Concerto on Orpheus
for two pianos and orchestra (1994), Modern Painters, opera (libretto by
M. Hoelterhoff, 1994), The Passing Measures for amplified orchestra (1998),
Link for instrumental ensemble (with Michael Gordon; 1998), Scraping Song
for percussion (1998), The Carbon Copy Building, comic book opera (with
Michael Gordon and Julia Wolf, to text and cartoons by Ben Katchor; 1999),
The Difficulty of Crossing a Field, opera (libretto M. Wellman; 1999), My
Very Empty Mouth for chamber ensemble (1999), Sweet Air for chamber ensemble
(1999), Birds of Minnesota for four percussionists, harp and piano (2000).
Sweet Air
During a trip to the dentist my oldest son Isaac was given laughing gas. The
dentist called it ‘sweet air’, a gentle name to take the fear
out of having a cavity filled. It worked. My son experienced something
–
a drug – so comforting that it made him ignore all signs of
unpleasantness. This seemed somehow musical to me. One of music traditional
roles has always been to soothe the uneasy. I must say I have never been
that interested in exploring this role. It is much easier to comfort the
listener than to show why the listener might need to be comforted. My piece
Sweet Air tries to show a little bit of both. In Sweet Air, simple, gentle
musical fragments float by, leaving a faint haze of dissonance in their wake.
Sweet Air was written for the ensemble Sentieri Selvaggi, which premiered it
at the Settembre Musica Festival in Turin on 9 September 1999. It was
intended as a present for Louis Andriessen’s sixtieth birthday.
David Lang
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