Bang On A Can

Bang on a Can denotes an annual series of new-music festivals organized by the experimental composer-performers Julia Wolfe, David Lang, and Michael Gordon rather than any fixed roster of players. Recordings issued under the Bang on a Can name are typically attributed to the Bang on a Can All-Stars, a core ensemble of six to eight musicians and arrangers who form the creative nucleus. Across both designations the collective has issued several dozen albums presenting works by the founding trio, their frequent associate Terry Riley, and additional composers. In 2022 the ensemble’s own imprint Cantaloupe issued a new version of Riley’s Autodreamographical Tales.

Wolfe, Lang, and Gordon established Bang on a Can in 1987; within the following decade the project expanded from a single-day event into an extensive program of concerts and recordings. The initial three releases consisted of live-performance anthologies drawn from the 1992, 1993, and 1994 festivals and appeared on CRI under the titles Bang on a Can Live, Vol. 1, 2, and 3. The first studio album, 1995’s Industry on Sony Classical, contained one composition each by Wolfe, Lang, and Gordon together with two extended chamber works by their influential mentor Louis Andriessen. Its successor, the stylistically broader 1996 release Cheating, Lying, Stealing, also came from Sony Classical. The next project, issued on Universal’s Point label, presented an inventive, meticulously realized reinterpretation of Brian Eno’s Ambient 1: Music for Airports in which the original tape-based sketches were transformed into pieces for live performers.

Lang, Wolfe, and Gordon subsequently created the opera Lost Objects, an extended narrative with Deborah Artman’s libretto scored for vocal soloists, mixed chorus, full orchestra, and, in notable guest spots, turntablist DJ Spooky. The group next documented early compositions by minimalist pioneer Steve Reich and delivered a fresh account of Terry Riley’s In C scored for an array of electric, electronic, and acoustic instruments; that recording inaugurated Cantaloupe Records, the label Bang on a Can founded to document affiliated artists. The imprint’s second release, 2001’s Renegade Heaven, included works by Glenn Branca and Phil Kline along with Gordon’s I Buried Paul, a wry nod to reversed-tape techniques and other inadvertent avant-garde gestures linked to the 1969 “Paul Is Dead” rumor. The All-Stars drew broader notice with its 2015 recording of Wolfe’s Anthracite Fields and with its 2020 account of Meredith Monk’s Memory Game. In 2022 the musicians again collaborated with Riley on a new version of Autodreamographical Tales.