The first three Spit compositions, by three younger composers, didn’t stay with me. But the fourth, John Adams’s "Shaker Loops," was anything but noisy. It’s a minimalist classic, intense and shimmering, stitching little patterns for orchestral strings into an intangible tapestry. It showed that Bang on a Can has a heritage, and that some of it comes from the minimalists (now, like Adams and Philip Glass, firmly established), who helped found the current classical music counterculture 20 years ago.
Next came a party, with dancing, mostly vegetarian munchies catered by East Village restaurants, and more performances, one of which -- "Wreck/Wed" by one of Bang on a Can’s founders, David Lang -- stayed on my mind. A lovely, simple little phrase kept falling down the scale; that’s what I remember, though what made it memorable were the offhand complexities that helped it along, like neatly planned little shrugs.
And then came the climax--the tenth annual Bang on a Can marathon, staged uptown at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall, as part of Lincoln Center’s "Great Performers" series. But before I describe that, it might be the time to whisper a couple of secrets. Bang on a Can started on a shoestring, but it now gets funded by many of the foundations, corporations, and government agencies that supported Speculum Musicae. Mr. Lang, 40 years old, just won a mid-career award from a pinnacle of the establishment, the American Academy of Arts and Letters. The organization has made recordings for Sony Classics, and its other two founders -- Michael Gordon and Julia Wolfe -- are represented on other major-label CDs.

So how offhand could Bang on a Can be? The marathon started with yet another classic (or maybe a mini-classic, not four minutes long), Philip Glass’s bittersweet "Modern Love Waltz." Margaret Leng-Tan played it on two toy pianos, celebrating the release of her delectable "Art of the Toy Piano" album on the Point Music label. In her hands, the instrument sounded like an unexpectedly serious blend of a harpsichord and a celesta, lightened by echoes of the "prepared"piano John Cage invented 50 years ago, with nuts and bolts rattling between the strings. As if to show just how serious a toy could be, she followed Glass with yet another major figure in alternative classical music, Conlon Nancarrow, whose music (originally written for player piano) depends on rhythmic precision. But Ms. Leng-Tan wasn’t just exact. She polished Nancarrow’s neatly calculated shifts of tempo, making them shine with an alert kind of joy.
Again, Bang on a Can was celebrating its historical debt, this time to the unclassifiable composers who might be grouped under the label "American individualists." That accomplished, the "banging" began. The word goes in quotes, though, because each composer had his or her own view of what music could be. Jerome Kitzke, second on the program, sang his piece "Breath and Bone," joined by Guy Klucevsek on accordion. The mere choice of an accordion constitutes a kind of banging, by the formal standards of the concert hall, and Kitzke’s wisps of sweet, never quite completed tunes wouldn’t have done much for academics, either.
Paul Dolden, young and nervous, from Vancouver, had tape-recorded bursts of instrumental sound, and pasted them into a happily abrasive collage that pushed and jabbed the live performers in the Bang on a Can All-Stars. This ensemble -- piano, percussion, sax, guitar, bass, and Maya Beiser’s fiercely glowing cello -- triumphed in one difficult piece after the other, even going beyond the call of musical duty to perform as dancers. They deserve an award, maybe even the Nobel Prize.

But as the afternoon stretched into evening, and then into night, the program’s climax came from Icebreaker, a sharp British contemporary music ensemble making its American debut (augmented by a brass section recruited locally) with Michael Gordon’s "Trance." This work, which Icebreaker has recorded on an Argo CD, lasted nearly an hour, melding remorseless minimal repetition with the joyful surge of underground dance music and (this is classical music, after all) echoes of Stravinsky. It also threw in more than one surprise -- enormous blasts on a bass drum, for instance, and a taped conclave of spiritual leaders, their voices all murmuring at once. For me, this piece just about defined a contemporary sensibility in classical music. People who hated it -- or seemed to flee from it, like a New York Times music critic, who didn’t even mention "Trance" in his dismissive Bang on a Can review -- 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.
Trance" reflected (among much else) the pop-cultural side of Bang on a Can’s aesthetic, which, taken as a whole, echoes most genres of alternative art. It tends to be wry and offhand, sometimes in your face, but almost never overtly emotional. I began to think, in fact, that I’d never find romantic feeling on a Bang on a Can event. But then came "Julia," by Bunita Marcus, a deceptively simple solo piano piece based on a John Lennon song, beautifully played (but perhaps with a touch too much pedal) by Lisa Moore. I was thrilled to be wrong, and touched by "Julia"’s unassuming depth. .

One last thought. Even though -- with its funding, and its Lincoln Center sponsorship -- Bang on a Can has become an established force, David Lang told me that he still feels like a "weirdo" in the classical music world. Above all, he meant that Bang on a Can-style work isn’t likely to be performed by major orchestras or opera companies, and of course he’s right.
But at the same time, his group isn’t free from its ingrown, classical-music heritage. Composers, brought onstage to chat at the marathon, were mostly asked about their compositional technique. Lincoln Center’s poster for the event was like most classical music advertising, a dense sea of type, uninviting for anyone who didn’t already know what it was about. Bang on a Can’s future plans (a festival, a school) and its marketing (flyers handed out at other arts events) seem timid, too. What would happen if his colleagues broke out of their "weirdo" classical-music niche, and -- forging links, perhaps, with other countercultural forces, like the people doing hiphop poetry -- sought a wider audience?

[Bang on a Can, incidentally, has programed music from the Group for Contemporary Music songbook. No established institution ever returned that favor.]

Wall Street Journal June 12, 1997