Tune in to Afternoon New Music at 3 pm on Monday, May 1st for an exclusive in-studio interview with Michael Gordon composer and co-founder of Bang on a Can. The program will discuss the 30th Anniversary Bang on a Can Marathon concert, which will be presented at Brooklyn Museum on Saturday, May 6 from 2-10 pm in the Museum’s Beaux-Arts Court.
Bang on a Can announces the complete lineup and schedule for its 30th Anniversary Bang on a Can Marathon, presented for the first time at Brooklyn Museum on Saturday, May 6, 2017 from 2-10pm in the Museum’s Beaux-Arts Court. This incomparable super-mix of boundary-busting music from around the corner and around the world features eight hours of rare performances by some of the most innovative musicians of our time side-by-side with some of today’s most pioneering young artists.
In its 30th year, Bang on a Can is committed more than ever to an increasing and inclusive worldwide community dedicated to innovation through music – a world where ideas flow freely across boundaries whether they are musical, geographical, spiritual. Co-founders Michael Gordon, David Lang, and Julia Wolfe explain, “Thirty years ago we started dreaming of the world we wanted to live in. It would be a kind of utopia for music: all the boundaries between composers would come down, all the boundaries between genres would come down, all the boundaries between musicians and audience would come down. Then we started trying to build it. Building a utopia is a political act – it pushes people to change. It is also an act of resistance to the things that keep us apart.”
Every Bang on a Can Marathon has sought to build an open, welcoming, and inclusive space for music from a wide variety of styles, genre, and origins. The 30th anniversary Marathon is no different – this year the Marathon includes music from such diverse places as Iraq (Amir ElSaffar and his Two Rivers Ensemble), India (Brooklyn Raga Massive), Morocco (Innov Gnawa), and the Caribbean (Pan in Motion and Kendall Williams), plus Bang on a Can co-founder and Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Julia Wolfe’s folk ballad Steel Hammer, based on over 200 versions of the John Henry ballad, a quintessential American legend of the laborers that worked the railroad.
