Bang on a Can was started 30 years ago by three young composers as a New York showcase for their own works and those of their contemporaries. It has continued to grow and evolve ever since, straddling the increasingly ill-defined boundaries between rock, jazz and minimalism, until it’s now one of the most important platforms for new music in the US. The three who dreamed up the idea, Michael Gordon, Julia Wolfe and David Lang, may have gone in different directions musically since, but they have all maintained their connections with the collective, and the late-night visit to the Proms by the All-Stars, Bang on a Can’s six-piece ensemble, naturally kicked off with pieces by all of them.
In Gordon’s contribution, Big Space, newly commissioned by the BBC, the group was joined by the saxophones, brass and percussion of the BBC Proms Youth Ensemble, conducted by Rumon Gamba, who were stationed in groups around the hall to send pulsing waves of sound bouncing across the audience. Onstage, the amplified instruments of the All-Stars added another layer of activity, though the balance between what they were doing and what was spinning around them wasn’t ideal. Lang’s Sunray worked its way from the most delicate, lyrical tendrils of sound to a raucous, explosive climax, while Wolfe’s Big Beautiful Dark and Scary, dense, intense and unremittingly sombre, was her response to the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center, which she witnessed.
The concert ended with music by two of the composers whose influence was so important in shaping the artistic and political credo of Bang on a Can. There was an arrangement of the closing section of Philip Glass’s Glassworks, the 1981 album-long score that signalled the emergence of his new, softer-edged, more listener-friendly musical brand, and an irrepressible realisation of Louis Andriessen’s strident Workers Union, from 1975, in which the choice of instruments and the pitches they play is left entirely to the performers. As Bang on a Can showed so excitingly, it’s still relevant, still angry, after all these years.
- Available on BBC iPlayer until 16 September. The BBC Proms continue until 9 September.
