Greg Sandow
NOISE IN NEW YORK
A lot of people who've never heard this music would surely love it -- people, to start with, who listen to alternative pop.
from the Wall Street Journal, October 30, 2003
Sometimes there's an event that seems to be an emblem of an era, not because it tells us anything that's new or startling, but because it shows us where we are.
"The New Yorkers" -- an event at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) last week -- did that for composers of new classical music. At the heart of it were works by Michael Gordon, David Lang and Julia Wolfe, who 16 years ago founded a group called Bang on a Can. Now they're an established, happy alternative to the sound and sometimes airless ambience of the classical concert hall; "The New Yorkers" showed how that can work.
Bang on a Can, first of all, isn't just the three composers. Among much else, there's a crack performing ensemble, the Bang on a Can All-Stars, which played some of the pieces. Plus there's a record label, Cantaloupe Music, on which some of the music is recorded.
And the net spreads wider. There were also performances by two of Bang on a Can's allies and offshoots -- Ethel, a sharp string quartet (with a terrific new CD on Cantaloupe) that thrives in the musical landscape Bang on a Can helped define, and Michael Gordon's own new group, the Michael Gordon Band. Mr. Gordon himself has just signed with Nonesuch, the important record label that -- by recording both classical music and serious pop artists like Emmylou Harris -- is redefining musical art as something wide and diverse.
And "The New Yorkers" also was visual, adding work by five filmmakers and by comics artist Ben Katchor to the mix. So it wasn't just a concert. It was a show, a word routinely used for many pop performances, but not one anybody would apply to most concerts of new classical music.
But then even the sound of Bang on a Can wouldn't suit most classical concerts; Mr. Gordon, Mr. Lang and Ms. Wolfe are too loose and rhythmic to fit completely in the standard concert hall. From classical music they take their sense of flow, the way their music changes, as it plays with moods and thoughts, as books and films routinely do. But much of their sound and rhythm also comes from somewhere else -- from pop, it's easy to say, though really what they write comes from everything around them.
Thus "The New Yorkers" is about New York. But it's put together from music Mr. Gordon, Mr. Lang and Ms. Wolfe wrote earlier, which was full of New York hope and grit and yearning, simply because the three composers live there. Thus their music can be laced with edgy noise. It's true, of course, that even mainstream classical composers tore at the ears of many concertgoers during the past century, because they started writing dissonant harmony. But that dissonance was sanitized, explained away as nothing more than compositional technique. Bang on a Can, by contrast, restores dissonance to what it really is, a reflection of the growing clangor of the world around us.
So in Ms. Wolfe's "Early that summer," one of the "New Yorkers" pieces, a string quartet seems to pulse and heave and shake, but very rapidly, unevenly, in the rhythm of a lashing dance. Mr. Lang's "Cheating, Lying, Stealing" has canny clanks and hesitations. But it sings, too, and so does Mr. Gordon's "Light Is Calling," where an amplified violin (sensationally played, with haunting insistence, by Todd Reynolds of Ethel) rides next to a pulsing accompaniment that seems both dogged and unsure.
The highlight might have been Mr. Lang's "Heroin," which daringly set new music to the lyrics of the famous Velvet Underground song by that name, itself a New York classic. Mr. Lang did this with no awkwardness or posing, but instead wrote something achingly sad, not remotely like the Velvet Underground, but, incredibly, just as strong. The video that went with this, by Doug Aitken, showed striking people who might have been asleep, or else strung out. I was touched, but others whom I've spoken to found it too much like a fashion ad.
Overall, the videos (apart from Mr. Katchor's wry and baffled comics) weren't as compelling as the music, but -- mostly showing melted, broken, or otherwise dissociated New York imagery -- they were far from awful, and together with evocative lighting and stage direction, they helped to make a charged environment for listening. When classical music purists say that visuals detract from music, I can't agree; for me they help to focus concentration.
"The New Yorkers" ran for three nights. Ticket sales, I'm told, couldn't quite sustain that, but on the other hand, as one Brooklyn Academy spokeswoman told me, "If we'd had just one performance, people would have been lined up outside begging for tickets." BAM scheduled three nights, she said, to start to build a market for future Bang on a Can productions.
And here's a conundrum, being pondered not just at BAM, but also in many other places, including Nonesuch Records, which wants to build an audience for Michael Gordon. A lot of people who've never heard this music would surely love it -- people, to start with, who listen to alternative pop. But how can they be reached? The future of classical composition might hang, at least in part, on the answer.