Joshua Kosman February 16, 2021Updated: February 16, 2021, 7:46 pm
Bang on a Can founding artistic directors David Lang (left), Michael Gordon and Julia Wolfe. Photo: Peter Serling
Something possibly worth noting about the influential New York new-music behemoth Bang on a Can is that the name is, strictly speaking, a misnomer. There aren’t any cans, and there’s only a reasonable amount of banging.
Yet the name, which evolved out of a throwaway joke in an early grant application, does get at a distinctive aspect of this organization. Since its inception in 1987, Bang and its founding artistic directors composers Julia Wolfe, Michael Gordon and David Lang have been hammering away at many of the artistic, economic and social structures underlying the world of contemporary classical music.