Industry: Bang on a Can and New Music in the Marketplace

2022 ◽  
pp. 1-3
Author(s):  
Caitlin Schmid
Keyword(s):  
New Music ◽  
Bang On A Can

Mediation and The Marketplace

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tim Rutherford-Johnson
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
New Music ◽  
Commercial Market ◽  
John Tavener ◽  
Bang On A Can ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Media ◽  
Arvo Part ◽  
Comprehensive History

Providing first a comprehensive history of spiritual minimalism– the extraordinarily successful phenomenon that made unlikely stars of Henryk Górecki, Arvo Pärt, and John Tavener in the early 1990s–this chapter makes the case that by the end of the 20th century new music had entered into a new and transformative relationship with the media and the commercial market, through new listening practices such as soundtracking, and through marketing towards new audiences. This is supported by discussions of composers and collectives that have particularly engaged with these, including Bang on a Can, Nonclassical and, in particular, Edition Wandelweiser.

Record Labels

Industry ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 190-220
Author(s):  
William Robin
Keyword(s):  
Contemporary Music ◽  
New Music ◽  
Bang On A Can ◽  
New Institutions

In the 1990s, Bang on a Can jumped from releasing albums on the academic label Composers Recordings, Inc. to signing a contract with the major label Sony Classical. Their path emblematized an unusual moment in recording contemporary music: after Nonesuch’s 1992 recording of Henryk Górecki’s Symphony No. 3 became extraordinarily popular, major labels looked to contemporary music as a means to reach new listeners. Whereas new music had previously been the provenance of noncommercial labels like CRI, major labels began investing in new composers and new institutions like Bang on a Can in the hopes of turning new profits. From Sony, Bang on a Can jumped to Philips’s Point Music and released their rendition of Brian Eno’s Music for Airports, an album designed to reach new rock audience; and from there, amidst the industry tumult of the late 1990s, they struck out on their own with the independent label Cantaloupe Music.

All-Stars

Industry ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 138-160
Author(s):  
William Robin
Keyword(s):  
Classical Music ◽  
New Music ◽  
Government Support ◽  
Earned Income ◽  
The Road ◽  
Music Ensembles ◽  
Contemporary Classical Music ◽  
Bang On A Can ◽  
History Of ◽  
On The Road

In 1992, Bang on a Can launched their own in-house ensemble, the All-Stars, an amplified sextet designed to take the spirit of the festival on the road. Along with building a new audience via national and international tours, the All-Stars also unlocked a new source of earned income for Bang on a Can amidst an era of declining government support. The sound and image of the extroverted ensemble facilitated a pivot in Bang on a Can’s identity, from strongly emphasizing the overcoming of stylistic divides within new music (as epitomized by the uptown–downtown binary) to instead emphasizing the blurring of genre boundaries between contemporary classical music and rock. The All-Stars also instantiated a division of labor between composers and performers that was unusual in the history of new-music ensembles and led to some significant tensions, tied to how Bang on a Can carefully positioned their new group toward the marketplace.

Epilogue

Industry ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 221-230
Author(s):  
William Robin
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
New Music ◽  
First Century ◽  
Summer Institute ◽  
The Great Recession ◽  
The Past ◽  
Early Twenty ◽  
The World ◽  
Bang On A Can ◽  
New Generation

By the early twenty-first century, new music’s marketplace turn was complete, though Bang on a Can’s journey had only begun: in the past two decades, they have received Pulitzer Prizes and grown into a multi-faced, multi-million dollar organization. The three founders began writing more large-scale works, and Bang on a Can’s marathons at the World Financial Center expanded their audience and diversified their programming. With their summer institute in the Berkshires, Bang on a Can has cultivated their ethos among a new generation of entrepreneurial composers, including the prominent indie classical scene, while American new music has grown from a fringe phenomenon to a cottage industry. But in the wake of the Great Recession, younger musicians are emerging amidst a crowded and precarious market, in which opportunities proliferate but stability remains elusive.

Introduction

Industry ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
William Robin
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Contemporary Music ◽  
New Music ◽  
Institutional Practices ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Bang On A Can ◽  
History Of

This introduction outlines the starting point for this study: the rise of Bang on a Can, a large-scale contemporary music organization that started as a marathon concert in downtown New York overseen by composers David Lang, Michael Gordon, and Julia Wolfe in 1987. Bang on a Can’s success in the 1980s and 1990s was a product not only of their individual ingenuity, but also a broader marketplace turn in new music: an ideological project, driven by institutions and musicians who contended that in order for contemporary composition to survive and flourish, it must reach a broad, non-specialist audience. This chapter surveys the postwar history of American composition through the lenses of uptown academicism and downtown experimentalism, describes how this book grapples with Bang on a Can’s institutional practices, and briefly outlines subsequent contents.

I COULDN'T MAKE A PIECE AS BEAUTIFUL AS THAT: A CONVERSATION WITH ALLISON CAMERON

Tempo ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 72 (286) ◽  
pp. 17-30
Author(s):  
Anna Höstman
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
San Diego ◽  
Experimental Music ◽  
New Music ◽  
Bang On A Can ◽  
Artistic Director

AbstractThe composer Allison Cameron (b. 1963) lives in Toronto. Her music has been widely performed at festivals such as Emerging Voices in San Diego, Evenings of New Music in Bratislava, Festival SuperMicMac in Montréal, Newfoundland Sound Symposium, New Music across America, Bang on a Can Marathon in New York, New York, and Rumori Dagen in Amsterdam. A dedicated performer of experimental music in Toronto, Allison co-founded the Drystone Orchestra (1989) and the Arcana Ensemble (1992). She has been improvising since 2000 on banjo, ukulele, cassette tapes, radios, miscellaneous objects, mini amplifiers, crackle boxes, toys and keyboards, in collaboration with Éric Chenaux, the Draperies, Ryan Driver, Dan Friedman, Mike Gennaro, Kurt Newman, John Oswald, Stephen Parkinson and Mauro Savo, among other musicians. In that same year she became Artistic Director of Toronto's experimental ensemble Arraymusic, a position she held for five years. In 2007, she founded the Allison Cameron Band with Eric Chenaux and Stephen Parkinson, and in 2009, the trio c_RL with Nicole Rampersaud (trumpet) and Germaine Liu (drums). Allison has experimented with graphic and notational scores that will soon be gathered and published as a collection. Additionally, she is the winner of the 2018 KM Hunter Award for music in Ontario.

Festivals

Industry ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 75-103
Author(s):  
William Robin
Keyword(s):  
Status Quo ◽  
New Music ◽  
The World ◽  
The Status ◽  
Bang On A Can

When Bang on a Can mounted their first festival in 1987, they charted a familiar path: young avant-gardists who, fed up with the status quo, sought to remold the world in their own image. The organization’s scheme was two-fold: a marketplace-oriented agenda to build a non-specialist audience for new music that they felt was missing from the uptown academic and downtown experimental scenes; and an aesthetic agenda aimed toward dissolving the uptown-downtown binary itself. These two goals had ideological and practical components, ones explored by delving into how the trio shaped what they chose to program and how they staged their early festivals, as well as examining contemporaneous institutions such as the ensemble Speculum Musicae, the venue Experimental Intermedia, and the festival New Music America.

Horizons

Industry ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 47-74
Author(s):  
William Robin
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Symphony Orchestra ◽  
New Music ◽  
Subsequent Work ◽  
Symphony Orchestras ◽  
American Composers ◽  
New York Philharmonic ◽  
High Profile ◽  
Bang On A Can ◽  
The Relationship

The downtown marathons of Bang on a Can might seem worlds away from the American symphony orchestra, but in the mid-1980s they shared a common context: David Lang worked for the New York Philharmonic in this period as an assistant to composer-in-residence Jacob Druckman. His assistantship was part of the granting organization Meet the Composer’s Orchestra Residencies Program, which placed American composers in residencies with symphony orchestras and fundamentally reshaped the relationship between new music and the marketplace. The program’s most high-profile success, the Philharmonic’s 1983 Horizons festival, captured an unprecedented audience for new music via its heavily publicized theme of “A New Romanticism?” And Lang’s subsequent work with the Philharmonic provided him with experience and connections, as well as a growing ambivalence toward the orchestral sphere that shaped the maverick mindset of Bang on a Can.

Industry

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Robin
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Contemporary Music ◽  
The United States ◽  
Culture Wars ◽  
New Music ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Steve Reich ◽  
New Public ◽  
Bang On A Can ◽  
Lincoln Center

Amidst the heated fray of the Culture Wars emerged a scrappy festival in downtown New York City called Bang on a Can. Presenting eclectic, irreverent marathons of experimental music in crumbling venues on the Lower East Side, Bang on a Can sold out concerts for a genre that had been long considered box office poison. Through the 1980s and 1990s, three young, visionary composers—David Lang, Michael Gordon, and Julia Wolfe—nurtured Bang on a Can into a multifaceted organization with a major record deal, a virtuoso in-house ensemble, and a seat at the table at Lincoln Center, and in the process changed the landscape of avant-garde music in the United States. Bang on a Can captured a new public for new music. But they did not do so alone. As the twentieth century came to a close, the world of American composition pivoted away from the insular academy and toward the broader marketplace. In the wake of the unexpected popularity of Steve Reich and Philip Glass, classical presenters looked to contemporary music for relevance and record labels scrambled to reap its potential profits, all while government funding was imperilled by the evangelical right. Other institutions faltered amidst the vagaries of late capitalism, but the renegade Bang on a Can survived—and thrived—in a tumultuous and idealistic moment that made new music what it is today.

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