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Bang On A Can Marathon to Open River To River Festival

David Vernier

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Presented by River To River Festival, Arts Brookfield and Bang on a Can

Sunday, June 17, 2012
Noon – Midnight
12 hours of FREE Live Music!

World Financial Center Winter Garden
220 Vesey Street, NYC
Admission: FREE

Bang on a Can Marathon information: 718.852.7755 or www.bangonacan.org
Full Festival Line-Up: www.RiverToRiverNYC.com

FEATURING MUSIC by Gregg August, Jeremy Howard Beck, Eve Beglarian, Oscar Bettison, Jonas Braasch, Martin Bresnick, Ruby Fulton, Michael Gordon, Gerard Grisey, Michael Harrison, David Lang, David T. Little, David Longstreth, Michael Lowenstern, Alvin Lucier, Thurston Moore, Ruben Naeff, Conlon Nancarrow, Pauline Oliveros, Brian Pertl, Steve Reich, Marcin Stanczyk, Akiko Ushijima, Lois V Vierk, Daniel Wohl, Julia Wolfe, Evan Ziporyn, AND MORE

FEATURING PERFORMANCES by Bang on a Can All-Stars, Pauline Oliveros and the Deep Listening Band, Dither, Grand Band, The Guidonian Hand, Heavy Hands, Newspeak, NYU Contemporary Music Ensemble with Jonathan Haas, Talujon, TwoSense, Ashley Bathgate, Maya Beiser, Vicky Chow, Kris Davis, Vijay Iyer, Kaki King, Michael Lowenstern, Alvin Lucier, Todd Reynolds, AND MORE

Directions to World Financial Center Winter Garden: http://rivertorivernyc.com/venue/world-financial-center-winter-garden-0

New York, NY (May 17, 2012) — On Sunday, June 17, from noon until midnight, Bang on a Can continues celebrating its 25th year with the annual Bang on a Can Marathon, FREE for the public at World Financial Center Winter Garden (220 Vesey Street, NYC), presented by River To River® Festival, Arts Brookfield, and Bang on a Can. The Marathon has been the opening event of River To River Festival for seven years, kicking off the month-long celebration of free music, dance, film, and arts events throughout Lower Manhattan.

Bang on a Can started out 25 years ago as a one day Marathon concert (on Mother’s Day in 1987 in a SoHo art gallery) and has grown into a multi-faceted performing arts organization with a broad range of year-round international activities. The New York Times reports, “A quarter-century later their impact has been profound and pervasive. The current universe of do-it-yourself concert series, genre-flouting festivals, composer-owned record labels and amplified, electric-guitar-driven compositional idioms would probably not exist without their pioneering example. The Bang on a Can Marathon, the organization’s sprawling, exuberant annual mixtape love letter to its many admirers, has been widely emulated…” Last year the Village Voice recounted, “[one could] enjoy a world made a bit more habitable – something like an authentically felt home – thanks to all manner of cultural practices that get dissed out in the mainstream.”

The 2012 Bang on a Can Marathon will be an incomparable 12-hour super-mix of boundary-busting music from around the corner and around the globe. This year’s Marathon will feature rare performances by some of the most innovative pioneering musicians of our time side-by-side with some of today’s newest exciting young artists:

The explosive Bang on a Can All-Stars will play the near impossible works of the late American-exile Conlon Nancarrow, the jarring music of Hague-based composer Akiko Ushijima, the haunting sounds of Poland’s Marcin Stanczyk, plus a set of tunes from their latest 2-CD album Big Beautiful Dark & Scary (released on Cantaloupe Music earlier this year) by composers David Longstreth of Dirty Projectors, Bang on a Can co-founder David Lang and Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth.

Experimental sound pioneer Alvin Lucier will recreate his electronica masterpiece I am sitting in a room from 1969, regarded as a definitive work of Minimal tape music. Lucier’s own voice, mixed with the resonant frequencies of the room, will transport the entire World Financial Center Winter Garden via harmonic reverberation.

Percussion masters Talujon will encompass the Winter Garden performing Girard Grisey’s hour-long atmospheric surround-sound epic Le Noir de l’Étoile, a piece for six percussionists, tape, and live electronics that is based around the sound emitted from a pulsar – a rotating neutron star. Grisey, a founder of the Spectral movement in music, was introduced to the sounds of the Vega Pulsar in 1985 by astronomer Joe Silk at the University of California, Berkeley.

This year’s Marathon also features a rare gathering of electronic art music pioneer Pauline OliverosDeep Listening Band, which specializes in performing and recording in resonant spaces such as caves and cathedrals. Named for Oliveros’ “Deep Listening” (a term she coined in 1991) concept based on meditation, improvisation, and electronic music, the Deep Listening Band will take the audience at the World Financial Center Winter Garden on an unforgettable sonic journey to an underground cistern.

In addition, this year Bang on a Can has assembled two extraordinary 6-piano bands, which will bring twelve of New York’s hottest pianists to the World Financial Center Winter Garden. Contemporary music mavericks Vicky Chow, David Friend, Paul Kerekes, Lisa Moore, Blair McMillen, and Isabelle O’Connell sound off in Steve Reich‘s Six Pianos from 1973 and Julia Wolfe‘s My lips from speaking, a centerpiece of her 2009 Cantaloupe Music release Dark Full Ride. The pioneering jazz pianist-composer Kris Davis will lead a killer 6-piano band of her own made up of five blistering pianist cohorts from the New York jazz scene including Sebastien Ammann, Kris Davis, Vijay Iyer, Russ Lossing, Angelica Sanchez, and Craig Taborn.

The indie guitar sensation Kaki King, who in 2006 was the sole woman and the youngest guitarist included on Rolling Stone’s “The New Guitar Gods” list, will bring her nearly-D.I.Y aesthetic to life, reflecting her broad musical influences ranging from punk to pop to experimental and everything in between.

Additional highlights include the Michael Gordon Band playing his brutally minimalist classic Thou Shalt/Thou Shalt Not!; virtuoso violinist Todd Reynolds teaming up with the extraordinary bass clarinetist-composer Michael Lowenstern; Heavy Hands bass band performing the Latin-infused grooves of Gregg August; trombone quartet The Guidonian Hand wailing on music by Eve Beglarian and Jeremy Howard Beck; the premiere of Michael Harrison’s sonic exploration for cello goddess Maya Beiser with a new film by Bill Morrison; the eclectic and electric five-guitar incarnation of Dither playing Lois V Vierk’s heart pumping Go Guitars; TwoSense performing Prayers Remain Forever by new-music titan Martin Bresnick; NYU Contemporary Music Ensemble with Jonathan Haas playing Ruben Naeff’s brand new octet Bash; pile-driving Newspeak making their Bang on a Can debut with music by David T. Little, Oscar Bettison, and Ruby Fulton; Bang on a Can All-Stars cellist Ashley Bathgate and pianist Vicky Chow performing solo the works of Daniel Wohl and Evan Ziporyn; and more.

About Bang on a Can: Bang on a Can celebrates 25 years during 2012, having grown from a one-day New York-based Marathon concert (on Mother’s Day in 1987 in a SoHo art gallery) to a multi-faceted performing arts organization with a broad range of year-round international activities. Current projects include the annual Bang on a Can Marathon; The People’s Commissioning Fund, a membership program to commission emerging composers; the Bang on a Can All-Stars, who tour to major festivals and concert venues around the world every year; recording projects; the Bang on a Can Summer Music Festival, a professional development program for young composers and performers led by today’s pioneers of experimental music; Asphalt Orchestra, Bang on a Can’s extreme street band that offers mobile performances re-contextualizing unusual music; Found Sound Nation, a new technology-based musical outreach program now partnering with the State Department of the United States of America to create Onebeat, a revolutionary, post-political residency program that uses music to bridge the gulf between young American musicians and young musicians from developing countries; cross-disciplinary collaborations and projects with DJs, visual artists, choreographers, filmmakers and more.  Bang on a Can’s inventive and aggressive approach to programming and presentation has created a large and vibrant international audience made up of people of all ages who are rediscovering the value of contemporary music.  For up-to-date information regarding Bang on a Can programs, events, and CD releases, visit www.bangonacan.org.

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