Founded in 1992 during the Bang on a Can Festival in New York, the Bang on a Can All-Stars ensemble is known all over the world for its ultra-dynamic concerts, as well as recordings of innovative music repertoire. Freely crossing boundaries between classical music, jazz, rock and world music, as well as experimental music, the ‘electrically reinforced’ group, comprised of six musicians, consistently shapes its own separate musical identity and expands the possibilities of music with new, unexplored territory. Its performances in the United States and abroad have placed a question mark over the definition of what a live concert is today. The members of the All-Stars have collaborated closely with a group of the most important and influential musicians of our time, such as Steve Reich, Ornette Coleman, master of the traditional Burmese percussion instrument pat waing Kyaw Kyaw Naing, Tan Dun and DJ Spooky. Among the most important endeavors featuring the ensemble, at the same time milestones in the development of contemporary music, are recordings of Brian Eno’s Music for Airports, an ambient classic, and Terry Riley’s In C; as well as concerts together with Philip Glass, Meredith Monk, Don Byron, Iva Bittová, Thurston Moore, Owen Pallett et al. In 2005, the All-Stars were recognized by Musical America as the best performing ensemble of the year, and the San Francisco Chronicle acclaimed it as presently the most important performer of contemporary music. The group’s newest project will have its première at the end of March/beginning of April 2012 at the Barbican Centre in London and at Lincoln Center in New York. It is a concert lasting the whole evening, containing film material, so-called ‘found sounds’, audio and video recordings of works commissioned specially for the occasion, as well as projections authored by the most perceptive contemporary musical thinkers – from the area of indie pop (Tyondai Braxton, Nick Zammuto from The Books), from the world of art (Christian Marclay), electronics (Mira Calix) and experimental classics (Michael Gordon, David Lang, Julia Wolfe, Evan Ziporyn). Among the most important events in the group’s current concert activity are: the world première, performances and a recording of Steve Reich’s 2×5, including a concert at Carnegie Hall as well as numerous appearances in China at the Beijing Music Festival and the Hong Kong Arts Festival; an American concert tour and Carnegie Hall concert presenting Julia Wolfe’s Steel Hammer; a staged concert together with Trio Mediaeval; performances of Evan Ziporyn’s dance opera A House in Bali, in which the Balinese gamelan was utilized, during the BAM Next Wave Festival in October 2010; and of other works commissioned from, among others, Louis Andriessen, Bill Frisell and Ryuichi Sakamoto. A huge part of the All-Stars’ repertoire is represented by works written especially for the ensemble with characteristic scoring and stage behaviors, by virtue of which they represent in and of themselves a certain musical quality. The All-Stars record for Cantaloupe Music, previously also for Sony, Universal and Nonesuch.

Picture: Stephanie Berger