The Bang on a Can Marathon: Social Distancing Edition

by Peter Tracy

Members of the Bang on a Can All-Stars are among the performers in Sunday’s marathon. From left to right: Robert Black, Ken Thomson, Ashley Bathgate, Vicky Chow, Mark Stewart, and David Cossin.

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.

STAFF PICKS: Friday Faves

Second Inversion hosts share a favorite selection from their weekly playlist. Tune in on Friday, September 7 to hear these pieces and plenty of other new and unusual music from all corners of the classical genre!

Dawn of Midi: “Ymir” (Thirsty Ear)

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. – Dacia Clay

Tune in to Second Inversion in the 2pm hour today to hear this piece.


Meredith Monk: Dolmen Music (ECM Records)
Meredith Monk, Julius Eastman, Andrea Goodman, Robert Een, Monica Solem, & Paul Langland, voices

Meredith Monk has secured a place in history as one of the most singular voices of the 20th and 21st centuries. For nearly six decades, she has redefined and revolutionized contemporary vocal music and performance, seamlessly weaving in elements of theatre and dance to create visceral musical experiences that transcend the confines of the classical tradition.

Her 20-minute masterwork Dolmen Music is an iconic example of her ability to merge ancient and modern musical ideas. In this piece, abstract vocalizations, primal rhythms, hypnotic dances, and ritualistic soundscapes come together in an intimate embrace of the human experience. – Maggie Molloy

Tune in to Second Inversion in the 4pm hour today to hear this piece.


Caroline Shaw: “Really Craft When You” (Cantaloupe Music)
Bang on a Can All-Stars

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. – Maggie Molloy

Tune in to Second Inversion in the 7pm hour today to hear this piece.

Snapshots from the Bang on a Can Summer Music Festival

This July Second Inversion’s Maggie Molloy was thrilled to be among four writers covering the Bang on a Can Summer Music Festival as a participant in the first ever Media Workshop! Under the mentorship of John Schaefer (of WNYC’s New Sounds) and Will Robin (writer and musicologist), Maggie wrote five articles for the New Sounds website highlighting unforgettable musical moments from this year’s summer festival. Click the links below to read each installment.

Bang on a Can, Sing through a Vacuum Tube

The world is Mark Stewart’s orchestra, and every pipe, tube, tabletop, and balloon is an untapped vessel just waiting to make beautiful music. Take a step inside Stewart’s Orchestra of Original Instruments. Click here to read more.


Vicky Chow Mesmerizes MASS MoCA (And She’s Just Warming Up)

“Please do not touch or play this piano” reads the sign atop a shiny Yamaha grand standing in the center of the Wardwell Gallery at MASS MoCA. That sign, of course, doesn’t apply to Vicky Chow. Go behind the scenes of her gallery performance of the Philip Glass Piano Etudes. Click here to read more.


Folk Songs from the Bang on a Can Festival

Scottish composer Ailie Robertson loves a good folk tale—and the spookier, the better. Explore the influence of Scottish folk traditions in Robertson’s music through two pieces performed at the Bang on a Can Summer Festival. Click here to read more.


Playing Like a Girl

There are 40,320 different ways to make music like a girl. Or at least, that’s how many ways you can perform Eve Beglarian’s piece Play Like a Girl. The Bang on a Can Fellows performed just one rendition of the piece in an afternoon concert of Beglarian’s music. Click here to read more.


The Celestial Music of Samn Johnson

“There’s something very comforting about music’s ability to manipulate time,” says composer Samn Johnson. Explore the influence of space, time, and the cosmos in Johnson’s music through three of his pieces performed at this summer’s festival. Click here to read more.

Second Inversion at the Bang on a Can Summer Music Festival!

Second Inversion’s Maggie Molloy is thrilled to be attending the Bang on a Can Summer Music Festival this year as a participant in the festival’s first ever Media Workshop! She will be at MASS MoCA from July 22-29, working alongside three other music journalists under the mentorship of John Schaefer (of WNYC’s New Sounds) and Will Robin (writer and musicologist).

If you see her there, say hello! We are excited for an opportunity to take Second Inversion to the opposite coast and connect in person with composers and new music-makers from around the world. Maggie will be attending rehearsals and concerts throughout the festival and would love the chance to talk with you about new music and upcoming projects. She’ll also be armed with free Second Inversion swag, so be sure to grab a magnet or pin when you see her!

Plus, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram for summer music updates from North Adams, Massachusetts. See you at the festival!

STAFF PICKS: Friday Faves

Second Inversion hosts share a favorite selection from their weekly playlist.  Tune in on Friday, February 16 to hear these pieces and plenty of other new and unusual music from all corners of the classical genre!

Anna Thorvaldsdottir: In the Light of Air (Sono Luminus)
ICE (International Contemporary Ensemble)

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.
 Maggie Molloy

Tune in to Second Inversion in the 1pm hour today to hear a movement from this piece.


Florent Ghys: “An Open Cage” (Cantaloupe Music)
Bang on a Can All-Stars

If you don’t have five hours to listen to John Cage’s sprawling, narrated sound art piece Diary: How to Improve the World (You Will Only Make Matters Worse), Florent Ghys’s “An Open Cage” offers a compelling (and surprisingly catchy) four-minute summary. In Ghys’s version, a solo pizzicato bass line dances within the rhythms of Cage’s calm and serene narration, painting his deadpan delivery with a funky groove and a distinctly contemporary color. The unconventional duet expands as the piece grows in musical force, gradually adding more and more instruments until finally a small chorus of voices appears, echoing Cage’s words:

“The avant-garde is flexibility of mind and it follows like day the night from not falling prey to government and education. Without avant-garde, nothing would get invented.”
 – Maggie Molloy

Tune in to Second Inversion in the 2pm hour today to hear this piece.


John Adams: Lollapalooza (Nonesuch Records)
Hallé Orchestra; Kent Nagano, conductor

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!
– Seth Tompkins

Tune in to Second Inversion in the 4pm hour today to hear this piece.


Missy Mazzoli: “Tooth and Nail” (Bedroom Community)
Nadia Sirota, viola

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! – Dacia Clay

Tune in to Second Inversion in the 7pm hour today to hear this piece.