David Lang

Few living American composers have had their work more widely performed than David Lang, a stylistic polymath who helped change the shape of late-20th-century music as a founding member of the Bang on a Can collective, which nonchalantly stretched the definition of what could be considered the classical tradition. Born in Los Angeles in 1957, Lang earned an undergraduate degree in music from Stanford University before pursuing a graduate degree at the University of Iowa. He earned a doctorate from Yale University in 1989, where he has been an adjunct professor ever since. Two years earlier, he formed Bang on a Can with fellow composers Julia Wolfe and Michael Gordon, creating a new model for the presentation of contemporary classical music by including composers and performers from rock, jazz, and experimental traditions in a pointed effort to knock down boundaries. Much of his output has been operatic and choral, including his imaginative 2007 adaptation of the Hans Christian Andersen story “The Little Match Girl” titled Little Match Girl Passion, a work influenced by Bach’s St. Matthew Passion. Other works have been more radical, such as The Whisper Opera from 2013, where the music never rises above a hush, making it impossible to record. He has also written music and arrangements for film, including the soundtrack of the 2009 film (Untitled).