Program note:

[purgatorio] POPOPERA is a new dance work created by Emio Greco and Pieter Scholten, principal choreographers of the Amsterdam based troupe Emio Greco/PC.

When I met Emio and Pieter in New York in 2000 I was taken by their thoughtful intensity and this attraction only grew when I saw their dance. Their work captures an other worldly energy that, when on the verge of cresting, just continues to get wilder and wilder. We began then a long conversation about creating a new work together. I suggested that the dance company learn how to play electric guitars and perform the music I write for them as part of a new dance piece. Although Emio and Pieter had reservations about this, they were intrigued, and in the summer of 2005 I met the dance company at MASS Moca in North Adams, Massachusetts and we began a 10 day workshop to see if it was even feasible to think that they could learn how to play music.

I was joined there by Bryce Dessner and Katie Geissinger, who coached the dancers in guitar and voice (respectively). Bryce and I immediately went to Guitar World in Albany and had the pleasure of buying eight new guitars. None of us, I think, were prepared for the intensity with which the dancers committed themselves to playing the guitar. The days consisted of long grinding morning to evening sessions in which they rarely wanted to take a break and never seemed to tire. At the end of the ten days we gave a workshop performance to an invited audience and Popopera was born.

Over the next three years I met repeatedly with the company, always in intense workshop situations, and was assisted by Taylor Levine who was their principal guitar coach throughout this period. Very early in the process I retuned the guitars, tuning the bottom three strings to F and the top three strings to E. This tuning created very rich sonorities and allowed me to create dense sounding harmonies. Between the summer of 2007 and the premiere in June of 2008 at the Holland Festival, Taylor Levine and I met with the company for intense multi-week sessions in Italy, Amsterdam, and again at Mass MOCA.

From the very beginning the company incorporated movement into the creation of the piece, so that after a bit of music was learned they would start to workshop the movement. This whole thing might have seemed crazy to everyone involved in this project but at a certain point it became clear that they were about to pull off something spectacular. All of a sudden they stopped being dancers and became musicians. I don't know exactly when this all happened but it encouraged me to write some fairly tricky rhythmic interplays between the group members.

Program note:

Michael Gordon says of this release: ''I started writing Van Gogh because of my obsession with Vincent Van Gogh's letters to his brother, Theo. I made trips to Holland and Southern France to explore and get the vibe of the area. I wrote Borinage first and used to sing it myself.

There was a long lag between the early performances in the 1990s and fall 2003, when the Crash Ensemble did it in Dublin without the video. I re-orchestrated the piece for that performance, adding 3 instruments (cello, bass, piano). Alarm Will Sound played that version in April 2005 at Merkin Hall, after which they suggested that we record the piece. Their performance and recording is everything I could have dreamed of.''

Alan Pierson of the unique 20-member band, Alarm Will Sounds, says about Van Gogh: ''I wasn’t much of a Vincent Van Gogh fan when I first heard the piece, but I was very moved by the story that Michael Gordon tells of the artist’s life—his adolescent anxieties, professional challenges, and a kind of transcendence that comes with his eventual institutionalization. There’s a directness and intimacy that Michael brings to Van Gogh’s story by sharing it entirely through Van Gogh’s private letters. And the immediacy of those words intensifies Van Gogh’s already staggering story.''

About Van Gogh's Structure & Text

The piece is divided into six parts and I put together the final texts myself, drawing from the letters Vincent wrote to Theo, in many cases combining lines from different letters or from different places in the same letter. What attracted me so much to these letters was the pain, the rawness, and the brutal honesty. I really found it hard to believe that anyone could tell another person, even his brother, the raw emotions that he experiences - so painful, so lonely, so humiliating.

London:
The text is taken from a letter that Vincent used to try to get a job at a church. It's basically his resume or his letter of self-introduction, so awkward and painful to read, and completely inappropriate for the purpose.

Borinage:
Vincent Van Gogh tried formal studies in theology but couldn't get through the academic part of it, so instead he got a quick diploma from an evangelical school and was sent to work in the coal mine district of Belgium among the miners. He took his mission a bit too seriously, descending into the mines with the miners and subsequently walking around town with the same blacken soot the town folk had on and even the Evangelicals considered him too far-out, too wild, and kicked him out. The subject of Borinage is his reaction to the ''old academic school,'' which in this case is organized religion.

The Hague One:
Van Gogh leaves the church behind and moves to The Hague where he starts to draw and paint. He had family connections there with art dealers and they were ready to bring him into the family business if he would paint things that were ''sell-able.'' He eventually totally alienated them by taking up with a prostitute whom he lived with for 2 years. In the text to The Hague One, he writes to Theo about this woman: ''we need not get drunk to feel something for each other, just put into your pocket what I can spare?'' He also writes, ''sometimes when I walked the streets so lonely and in misery without money, I felt that they were my sisters.''

The Hague Two:
Hague Two is the first place in the piece that painting is dealt with. Vincent is still early in his painting career, he's still figuring out what to do and how to do it. A total outsider, he understands the plasticity of the ''art market,'' and then later relates to Theo a humiliating encounter with his art contacts. And all this time, Theo is supporting Vincent, so he's further humiliated into asking Theo ''the sooner you can send the money the better it would be for me. I spent my last penny on this stamp.''

Arles:
Arles is mostly instrumental although there are some lines of spoken text.

St. Remy:
Here, Van Gogh has already moved to Southern France and done most of his great work. He has developed some kind of violent seizure, like an epileptic attack, suddenly and without warning. He's committed himself to a mental institution, thinking that maybe he can get some help or at least they will prevent him from further violently hurting himself. This perhaps is my favorite section, built on 2 chords that go back and forth. At the end I set a description of a painting he works on at St. Remy.

-December 2007

Notes From Alan Pierson, conductor of Alarm Will Sound

What attracted me to the Van Gogh opera was definitely the music. I think it's outstanding, and it blew my mind that no one had recorded it yet. The Van Gogh opera is hard-hitting, edgy, but also has some beautiful moments of impassioned lyricism. I wasn't much of a Van Gogh fan when I first heard the piece, but I was very moved by the story that Michael tells of the artist's life - his adolescent anxieties, professional challenges, and a kind of transcendence that comes with his eventual institutionalization. There's a directness and intimacy that Michael brings to Van Gogh's story by sharing it entirely through his own private letters, and the immediacy of those words intensifies Van Gogh's already staggering story. And all of this emotion makes for some of Michael's most impassioned music ever. I loved recording it, and I'm excited to perform it again!

Program note:

Aggressive, hair-raising, and unstoppable, Trance caused a sensation when released in 1995. Called ''a minimalist classic'' by The New York Times, Trance is a kaleidoscope of pan-pipe melodies and provocative rhythms, and features Icebreaker’s aggressively virtuosic sound.

''For me, this piece just about defined a contemporary sensibility in classical music. People who hated it -- or seemed to flee from it have my sympathy. But these tender souls are missing what may turn out to be masterpiece, and in years to come may look like the anxious oldsters who, back in 1956, grimaced at the rise of rock and roll.'' - Greg Sandow, Wall Street Journal

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Enhanced CD with video component: the short film Light is Calling by Bill Morrison, with a musical score by Michael Gordon.

Review
Put together a background in new classical music with nocturnal visits to London dance clubs and you get Michael Gordon's Light is Calling, one of those rare hybrids that doesn't fall between two stools in a stinky heap. Computer musician Damian leGassick took Gordon along on some late night adventures to clubs and suggested that Gordon might make something interesting out of the combination of modern electronic dance music and Gordon's very New York-ish experience in the avant-garde jazz, rock, and classical scenes.

Light is Calling is a lively and provocative album, definitely a Saturday night experience. It's a kind of spiritual cousin to Reich Remixed, a Nonesuch CD that was released several years ago. On that CD, several progressive dance club DJs took several of Steve Reich's pieces and remixed them as if they were dance music. The result, while not typically Reichian, was revelatory. The music on this CD is Gordon's own, but I gather that leGassick and R. Luke DuBois (another big player in the electronica scene) made major contributions to the present CD, at least conceptually. Gordon's post-minimalist writing meshes perfectly with the moody bass-lines and rhythms associated with the club scene – a form of minimalism in its own right, now that I think about it. One of the eight tracks on the CD sounds like the start of John Adams's Shaker Loops, but it soon spins off in a completely different direction – Shakers at a rave, perhaps.

There's nothing new about mashing genres together. Take, for example, ELP's version of Pictures at an Exhibition or, coming from the other direction, Philip Glass's symphonies based on David Bowie albums. In almost every case, however, the hybrid is weaker than its individual components. Light is Calling is different. It is fresh and funky, yet it is disciplined. Nothing feels tacked on or wedged in. The success comes, in large part, from Gordon's refusal to rely on clichés. What he has done is idiomatic in both the electronica and new classical genres, yet not once does it sound derivative. Light is Calling has its very own sound, and it should appeal to wildly disparate listeners.

This enhanced CD has a video component which can be viewed on a PC – the short film Light is Calling directed by Bill Morrison with a musical score by Gordon. This is an amazing bonus, and worth the price of the CD by itself. Like Decasia, Morrison's recent cause celebre (also scored by Gordon), Light is Calling is an exploration of the mournful beauty that can be found in decay – specifically, in the decay of film itself. Most films made prior to 1950 are literally decomposing, a casualty of the fragile nitrate film stocks used in the first part of the 20th century. Morrison has ''preserved'' an excerpt of a dying film (The Bells) from 1926; his only modifications, I believe, have been to slow it down and to tint it amber. The result is both gorgeous and horrifying – a sort of cinematic portrait of Dorian Gray… or of Dante's Inferno. Faces appear to emerge from fireballs, only to warp, bubble, and be drained of their features. Gordon's infinitely sad score (which also can be heard on the audio-only portion of the CD) is a perfect musical analogue for the ''meltingly'' beautiful images.

Copyright © 2004, Raymond Tuttle, ClassicalNet

Program note:

Decasia is a large-scale, single-movement, relentlessly monumental work about decay - the decay of melody, tuning, and classical music itself. Following the atmospheric ambience of Weather, Gordon's new work retunes a giant amplified orchestra (Basel Sinfonietta), with gripping strings, four detuned pianos, massive winds & brass. This CD has traveled around the globe as the soundtrack to Bill Morrison's film ''Decasia'' (Sundance, Rotterdam, Edinborough Fest's).

''A fascinating ride up and down a fine, slippery musical slope.'' - T.J. Medrek, Boston Herald

DVD available in NTSC and PAL in the Bang on a Can web store.

Program note:

Weather transcends the boundaries of both classical and pop music. It is an onslaught of sound, tuneful, rhythmic and raw. Michael Gordon’s music embraces elements of dissonance, rigorous minimalism, modality and popular culture in a bold and direct sound. ''...satisfyingly direct and immediate, as exhilarating and refreshing as the storm it accurately depicts.'' - The Wire

Multimedia video component by Elliot Caplan

Program note:

Lost Objects is a musical exploration of the meaning of memory. With the spine of a baroque oratorio layered with the muscle of modern times, it is a powerful monument to the loss of people, things, rituals, ideas.

In their second major collaborative performance project, genre-defying composers Michael Gordon, David Lang and Julia Wolfe team up with polyphonic writer Deborah Artman to work a strange and beautiful alchemy of text and sound. The baroque virtuosity of the legendary Concerto Köln is challenged and stretched by the hard-edged electric Bang on a Can Lost Objects Ensemble and the avant-turntables of DJ Spooky. In the same way that oratorios such as Handel's Messiah were intended to be staged, the 3 vocal soloists and 30 voice chorus of LOST OBJECTS inhabit a mythic and beautiful stage world, under the direction of the acclaimed, award-winning director François Girard (''32 Short Films About Glenn Gould,'' ''The Red Violin'').

The result is LOST OBJECTS, a haunting, hallucinatory and humane musictheater piece for baroque orchestra, rock ensemble (electric guitar, electric bass, keyboard and drums), live DJ remix, solo voices and choir. The unique weave of sounds combines the resonance of animal gut and wood with the ethereal blend of soprano and countertenor voices mixed with the edgy force of amplified rock instruments and drums. ''LOST OBJECTS is a prayer hall, a hymn but also an invention,'' writes Ms. Artman. ''There is a narrative, somewhat sacred, but it is a fractured meditation. In the tenuous and hurried climate of the times we live in now, LOST OBJECTS asks us to pause and consider the grace bestowed upon each thing, person, animal and idea, the ordinary and the not-so-ordinary lost objects of our shared and vanishing culture.''

Creators

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LIMITED EDITION CD + DELUXE 48-PAGE FULL-COLOR BOOK Chock full of drawings from acclaimed New Yorker cartoonist and Pantheon Books author Ben Katchor

The Carbon Copy Building is a dynamic and visually stunning trip through the gritty underside of urban life. Words and drawings by celebrated New Yorker comic-strip artist and recent MacArthur Grant recipient Ben Katchor are brought vividly to life by music from Bang on a Can Co-Artistic Directors Michael Gordon, David Lang, and Julia Wolfe.

Rock band meets opera, The Carbon Copy Building is a full-length work for four singers and winds, keys, guitar, and drums; and is the first major collaborative work from the Bang on a Can Co-Artistic Directors. The revolutionary show won the Village Voice 2000 OBIE Award for Best New American Work, and embraces the dark, witty humor of Katchor, known for his cult classic underground comic, Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer. After many years, the work is finally out on CD, accompanied by Katchor’s beautiful illustrated libretto; in a limited edition hard-bound Book+CD case.

''The Carbon Copy Building is made to be read as much as heard... [the music is] translucent and unhurried, it allows the audience to linger and contemplate Mr. Katchor’s urban otherworld.''
—The New York Times

Program note:

Brian Eno's classic album arranged for live performance by Michael Gordon (1.1), David Lang (1.2), Julia Wolfe (2.1) and Evan Ziporyn (2.2).

THIRTY YEARS AGO, Brian Eno put out Music for Airports, his first ''ambient'' album. It was the precursor for the broad spectrum of music that is today called ambient, a term Eno himself invented. It was a four-part piece composed in the studio and devoid of all but the most basic aspects of song, challenging listeners to re-imagine what music might be.

TWENTY YEARS LATER, Bang on a Can All-Stars created their own version of the work with live musicians, all the while staying close to the source by sharing the project as it developed with Brian Eno. It was released on record in 1998 to wide acclaim.

TEN YEARS LATER, Cantaloupe Music releases a live version of Music for Airports as a digital-only release via the Bang on a Can Store, eMusic, iTunes, Amazon, and various other digital music vendors. (A limited edition CD will be available exclusively to Cantaloupe Club members.) To this day, the All-Stars frequently perform the classic work live, most recently, in the middle of the night at this past year's Bang on a Can Marathon in New York City. The Village Voice was there for the performance along with hundreds of fans and had this to say:

''It was beautiful, and best enjoyed while lying flat on your back and staring straight up, through the palm trees and the sunroof to the deep night outside, with the neighboring, towering buildings overhead appearing to curve inward around you as breathy keyboards slowly gave way to meandering clarinet.''

In the recording, the overarching calm of the piece is enhanced with touches of instrumentation behind and around its central six-note piano phrase. In the two sequences that follow the piano phrase, a choir of voices fades in and out against the sparest of sonic landscapes.

All songs performed by Bang on a Can All-Stars: Maya Beiser, cello; Evan Ziporyn clarinets (keyboard/samplers on 1/1); Mark Stewart, guitar; Steven Schick, percussion; Lisa More, piano/keyboards; Robert Black, bass.

Program note:

Milan is home to the feisty young ensemble Sentieri Selvaggi, a band of intrepid composers and performers who have taken southern Europe by storm. Led by composers Carlo Boccadoro and Filippo del Corno, Sentieri Selvaggi is a collective of musicians dedicated to breaking down barriers between pop and high art, between music and theater, between the concert hall and the street.

AC/DC is a collection of some of their most defining work, including premiere recordings of new works by Louis Andriessen, Laurie Anderson, David Lang, Michael Gordon, and DECCA international recording sensation Ludovico Einaudi...

Program note:

Founded by James Poke and John Godfrey in 1989 to play at the new Dutch music festival in York, Icebreaker is a 13-piece group consisting of pan-pipes, saxes, electric violin and cello, guitars, percussion, accordion and keyboards and have have established themselves as one of the UK's leading contemporary music interpreters.

As a group of musicians that always plays amplified, they boast an exciting repertoire which encompasses some of the best known and most influential names in contemporary music today, such as Louis Andriessen, Diderik Wagenaar, David Lang, Michael Gordon, Yannis Kyriakides and Philip Glass. Icebreaker create music that appeals to contemporary classical, rock and alternative music audiences alike.

Given their unusual instrumental combination, Icebreaker represent a unique voice in British music making. This is a re-mastered release of Icebreaker's breakout 1994 recording on Argo. Terminal Velocity is a must-have for fans of modern contemporary music.

Including Michael Gordon - Yo Shakespeare; Louis Andriessen, arr J. Poke - de Snelheid; Gavin Bryars - The Archangel Trip; Damian Le Gassick - Evol; David Lang - Slow Movement

Program note:

The ground-breaking Sony recordings reissued. Too funky for the academy, the Bang on a Can All-Stars emerged from the scruffy environs of downtown New York playing a new kind of music, with a new kind of energy, for a new kind of audience. This is the music that made them famous, newly packaged and remastered onto one 74- minute disc.

Music by Nick Didkovsky, Michael Gordon, Annie Gosfield, David Lang, Lois V Vierk, Julia Wolfe, and Evan Ziporyn.

Program note:

Gritty spirituality and blistering performances from the electrifying Bang on a Can All-Stars. Prayers, incantations and miracle cures from edgy urbanites in search of the soul. Music by Glenn Branca, Arnold Dreyblatt, Michael Gordon, Phil Kline, and Julia Wolfe.

''Number 1 CD of 2001'' - Alan Kozinn, The New York Times

Program note:

Music by Michael Gordon, David Lang, Louis Andriessen, and Julia Wolfe. Reissued by Cantaloupe Records in 2002.

Program note:

In the Ocean
Directed by Frank Scheffer

Frank Scheffer's In the Ocean is unique in the genre of music documentary. With the cooperation of musicians who have never appeared before in the same film (Steve Reich, Brian Eno, Louis Andriessen), it endeavours to explain the complex contemporary music picture of the past thirty years, as well as showing how ideas move back and forth between continents. Scheffer explores the relationship between American and European composers, of how they view and influence each other. This is personified in the film by the story of Bang on a Can, one of the most popular and vital movements in music today. The founders and artistic directors of Bang on a Can are three young American composers: Michael Gordon, David Lang, and Julia Wolfe. They represent a new generation that has established themselves as the heirs to the legacy of American composers going back to Charles Ives, John Cage, and up through Steve Reich and Philip Glass.

Music for Airports
Music composed by Brian Eno
Performed by Bang on a Can All-Stars
Directed by Frank Scheffer

During the 1999 Holland Festival, the New York group, Bang on a Can, performed thier new instrumental version of Brian Eno's ambient composition of the seventies Music for Airports. The performance was accompanied Frank Scheffer's digitally shot images of Schiphol Airport on a large overhead screen.