As one of America’s most performed composers, David Lang has “solidified his standing as an American master,” as The New Yorker puts it. His catalog of work is extensive, and his opera, orchestra, chamber, and solo works are by turns ominous, ethereal, urgent, hypnotic, unsettling, and emotionally direct. In 2008, the New York-based composer was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for the little match girl passion, a score for four voices and a few percussion instruments, played by the singers, based on the children’s story by Hans Christian Andersen. Additionally, Lang’s score for Paolo Sorrentino’s film Youth received Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations, among others. Other recent work includes man made, a concerto co-commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the BBC Symphony; the loser, an opera based on the novel by Thomas Bernhard, which opened the 2016 Next Wave Festival at the Brooklyn Academy of Music; and prisoner of the state, an opera co-commissioned by the New York Philharmonic, De Doelen concert hall in the Netherlands, the Barbican Centre in London, l’Auditori concert hall in Barcelona, the Bochum Symphony Orchestra in Germany, the Concertgebouw in Belgium, and Malmö Opera in Sweden. Lang is co-founder and co-artistic director of Bang on a Can, a New York-based organization dedicated to the support of experimental music.

David Lang’s appearance is courtesy of the William Bolcom Guest Residency at the U-M School of Music, Theater, and Dance, with additional support from the University of Michigan Museum of Art (UMMA).