by Peter Tracy
Since its idealistic beginnings in 1987, the Bang on a Can Marathon has attained something of a legendary status among fans and creators of contemporary classical music. With early performances featuring well-loved figures like John Cage, Steve Reich, and Pauline Oliveros alongside music by up-and-coming composers, the yearly marathon has continued to be a welcoming and community-oriented festival that breaks down the barriers between composers, performers, audience, and genre.
Given the circumstances this year, Bang on a Can is livestreaming the yearly marathon this Sunday with over six hours packed with adventurous music of all shapes and sizes. Returning this year is the ever-popular minimalism of Steve Reich and Philip Glass, as well as John Adam’s cinematic China Gates performed by Bang on a Can All-Star pianist Vicky Chow. Also coming your way are performances by genre-defying performers like jazz pianist and composer Vijay Iyer and flautist, vocalist, and composer Nathalie Joachim, whose recent album Fanm d’Ayiti explores music from the women of Haiti.
It’s hard to sum up just how much innovative music is on offer this Sunday, with musicians from around the world and from a wide variety of musical traditions coming together in one back-to-back celebration of sonic experimentation and community. As it’s always done, the Bang on a Can Marathon continues to show that supporting the artists and audiences of new music is a mission that doesn’t stop at the doors of the concert hall.
You can stream the full marathon right here on Sunday, May 3 from 12-6pm PT, 3-9pm ET.
For more details on the Bang on a Can Marathon, including the full performance lineup, click here.
This is one of my new favorite things. As literally every reviewer ever has noted, the ensemble Dawn of Midi is comprised of the same arrangement as any traditional jazz trio (drum kit, grand piano, and upright bass), but the way they use their instruments is more in line with the connotations of the ensemble’s name. This music sounds closer to Tycho, “15 Step” by Radiohead, or the minimal aspects of Aphex Twin than it does to any jazz you’ve ever heard. It’s a tight, taught, surely-not-made-by humans kind of sound, with rhythms set in cool, precise geometric shapes for your ears. And it kinda makes me want to dance. Or at least to try to. –
Caroline Shaw’s “Really Craft When You” is best described as a sonic quilt. It’s a chamber piece that stitches together vibrantly textured patches of chamber music with recorded interviews of quilters from North Carolina and Virginia in the 1970s. The result is a cheeky and heartfelt patchwork of found sounds and sonic squares expertly colored by the Bang on a Can All-Stars—and as it turns out, the quilters offer some pretty good musical advice too. 
If I had to describe this piece in one word, it would be ice. Not only is it an icy, ethereal soundscape sculpted by an Icelandic composer, but it’s even performed by ICE (the International Contemporary Ensemble). Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s In the Light of Air is an iridescent sound world scored for viola, cello, harp, piano, percussion, and electronics. Infinitely varied in its timbres and textures, the piece evokes the translucent calm and quiet sparkle of an icy landscape, with gorgeous harp details, gentle piano echoes, and whispering melodies glittering above the rumbling earth below.
If you don’t have five hours to listen to John Cage’s sprawling, narrated sound art piece 
I first encountered this piece over 10 years ago in my college wind ensemble. Although this version is for orchestra, the band version is an excellent example of quality writing for winds. And beyond that, this piece is one of the best examples of onomatopoeic music anywhere; once you hear it, you can never un-hear it. Loll-a-pa-loo-za!
Admittedly, I’m a little bit of a fangirl when it comes to Missy Mazzoli and Nadia Sirota, so I may be somewhat biased in my review of this piece. I love how much is going on in it—there are things going on near and far and in between. And Mazzoli brings the electronic textures I’ve heard in some of the music from her band Victoire into this. I hear echoes of Radiohead’s “Pyramid Song” in the chord progressions, and the same kind of desperation in the viola as I heard in Abigail Fischer’s voice in Mazzoli’s Song from the Uproar. This was my introduction to Sirota’s album Baroque, and I can’t wait to dig in to the rest of it! –