[NEohioPAL] Pulitzer Prize-Winning Composer David Lang Joins the Faculty at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music

[Marci Janas]

Media Contacts Only:
Marci Janas, Director of Conservatory Communications
440-775-8328 (office); 440-667-2724 (cell); marci.janas at oberlin.edu
Charlotte Landrum, Associate Director of Conservatory Media Relations
440-775-5474 (office); charlotte.landrum at oberlin.edu


*FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:*

*PULITZER PRIZE-WINNING COMPOSER DAVID LANG *
*JOINS THE FACULTY AT THE OBERLIN CONSERVATORY OF MUSIC *

*"Bang on a Can" Founder is Distinguished Visiting Professor of Composition
and Composer in Residence

*

OBERLIN, OHIO (September 24, 2008)— Composer David Lang, founder of the
boundary-pushing new music collective Bang on a Can and recipient of the
2008 Pulitzer Prize in Music, will join the Oberlin Conservatory of Music
this fall as Distinguished Visiting Professor of Composition and Composer in
Residence.

"David's work as a composer is extraordinary and his contribution to the
canon of great music will endure with importance for generations into the
future," says Dean of the Conservatory David H. Stull. "He is a tremendous
advocate for the creation and performance of new music, and this advocacy is
only surpassed by his passion for teaching and mentoring young musicians. We
are privileged to welcome him to our faculty."

Lang was awarded the 2008 Pulitzer Prize in Music for *The Little Match Girl
Passion*, a work for four solo voices and percussion based on the Hans
Christian Andersen fable *The Little Match Girl.* The work was
co-commissioned by the Carnegie Hall Corporation and the Perth Theater and
Concert Hall, and premiered October 25, 2007, in Zankel Hall at Carnegie
Hall in New York City.

Lang is perhaps best known as a leader of Bang on a Can, which he co-founded
in 1987 with Michael Gordon and Julia Wolfe. The organization advances
contemporary music through recordings, performances by the touring Bang on a
Can All-Stars, and two signature annual concert events, the Marathon in New
York City and the Summer Music Festival at the Massachusetts Museum of
Contemporary Art in the Berkshires. Of the Marathon, *Vanity Fair *writes:
"There are other places to hear new contemporary music, but it is seldom
offered with such a potent blend of intensity, authority, and abandon." In
1997, Bang on a Can established the People's Commissioning Fund, which
bundles contributions of all sizes from individuals to commission new works
for the Bang on a Can All-Stars.

*About David Lang*
"There is no name yet for this kind of music," writes *Los Angeles
Times*music critic Mark Swed about the works of American composer
David Lang, but
audiences around the globe are hearing more and more of it: in performances
by such organizations as the Santa Fe Opera, the New York Philharmonic, the
San Francisco Symphony, the Cleveland Orchestra, and the Kronos Quartet; at
Tanglewood, the BBC Proms, the Munich Biennale, the Settembre Musica
Festival, the Sydney 2000 Olympic Arts Festival, and the Almeida, Holland,
Berlin, Strasbourg and Huddersfield festivals; in theater productions in New
York, San Francisco, and London; in the choreography of Twyla Tharp, La La
La Human Steps, the Nederlands Dans Theater and the Royal Ballet; and at
Lincoln Center, the South Bank Centre, Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center,
the Barbican Centre, and the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

Recent projects include the Pulitzer Prize-winning *The Little Match Girl
Passion*, commissioned by Carnegie Hall for Paul Hillier's vocal ensemble,
Theater of Voices; *Writing On Water *for the London Sinfonietta, with
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.

In addition to the Pulitzer Prize, Lang has received numerous honors and
awards, including the Rome Prize, the BMW Music-Theater Prize (Munich), and
grants from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Foundation for Contemporary
Performance Arts, 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*, performed live by the
Bang on a Can All-Stars at the Next Wave Festival of the Brooklyn Academy of
Music. *The Carbon Copy Building* won the 2000 Village Voice OBIE Award for
Best New American Work. The CD recording of *The Passing Measures* was named
one of the best CDs of 2001 by the *New Yorker* magazine. His most recent
recording, *ELEVATED* (on Cantaloupe), comprises three atmospheric and
meditative pieces on CD accompanied by a DVD of the same three pieces
interpreted by noted visual artists William Wegman, Bill Morrison, and Matt
Mullican.

Lang is cofounder and co-artistic director of New York's legendary Bang on a
Can and Professor of Music Composition at the Yale School of Music. His work
is recorded on the Sony Classical, Teldec, BMG, Point, Chandos, Argo/Decca,
Caprice, CRI, and Cantaloupe labels. His music is published by Red Poppy
(ASCAP) and is distributed worldwide by G. Schirmer, Inc.
More information is available at www.bangonacan.org.
*
About the Oberlin Conservatory of Music*
The Oberlin Conservatory of Music, founded in 1865 and situated amid the
intellectual vitality of Oberlin College since 1867, is the oldest
continuously operating conservatory in the United States. Renowned
internationally as a professional music school of the highest caliber and
pronounced a "national treasure" by the *Washington Post*, Oberlin's alumni
have gone on to achieve illustrious careers in all aspects of the serious
music world. Many of them have attained stature as solo performers,
composers, and conductors, among them Jennifer Koh, Steven Isserlis, Denyce
Graves, Franco Farina, Christopher Robertson, Lisa Saffer, George Walker,
Christopher Rouse, Huang Ruo, David Zinman, and Robert Spano. All of the
members of the contemporary sextet eighth blackbird, most of the members of
the International Contemporary Ensemble, and many of the members of Apollo's
Fire are Oberlin alumni. The Miró, Pacifica, Juilliard, and Fry Street
quartets, among other chamber ensembles, include Oberlin-trained musicians,
as do major orchestras and opera companies throughout the world.

Articles appearing in the *New York Times* have acclaimed Oberlin as a
"hotbed of contemporary classical players" and acknowledged that Oberlin
"has produced some of the top names in contemporary music." In 2007, in a
co-production with Miller Theatre at Columbia University, Oberlin presented
the American premiere of Olga Neuwirth's opera *Lost Highway *to
considerable critical praise. Since 1969 Oberlin has been a pioneering
institution in the field of electronic and computer music; its TIMARA
Department (Technology in Music and the Related Arts) is renowned throughout
the world as one of the leading programs of electronic and computer music
for undergraduate students.

For more information about Oberlin, visit www.oberlin.edu/con.

###


-- 
Marci Janas
Director of Conservatory Communications
and Editor, *Oberlin Conservatory* Magazine
Oberlin Conservatory of Music
39 West College Street
Oberlin, OH 44074
www.oberlin.edu/con
Voice: 440.775.8328
Fax: 440.775.5457
marci.janas at oberlin.edu
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