World Premiere: David Lang's before and after nature
Performed by Bang on a Can All-Stars and the Los Angeles Master Chorale
Words and Music by David Lang
Video and Projections by Tal Rosner
Performed by the Bang on a Can All-Stars and the Los Angeles Master Chorale
When Stanford alumnus David Lang set out to write a new composition for the Bang on a Can (BOAC) All-Stars, the electrifying music ensemble he co-founded, he looked to his alma mater for inspiration. Commissioned by Stanford Live specifically to bring Lang and the BOAC All-Stars back to campus, before and after nature is a meditation on the natural world, both before human existence and after humans are gone.
Lang met closely with scholars, faculty and students in Stanford's Doerr School of Sustainability, and with the Doerr-affiliated Environmental Justice Working Group. He combined what he learned with his own readings from the past 50 years of environmental thinking, writing his own texts that explore the different ways we define and understand nature, now that it has been forever changed by our behavior. He set these texts for voices and the BOAC All-Stars and he enlisted video pioneer Tal Rosner to invent a way to visualize the meanings of the music in video and projection.
Lang is a renowned Pulitzer Prize-winning composer, the recipient of a Grammy Award and an Oscar nomination, with an extensive body of work, including several pieces co-commissioned and presented by Stanford Live, including the little match girl passion (2007), death speaks (2012), and sun-centered (2022). His most recent work includes large scale choral compositions the writings (2019) and poor hymnal (2023), and the operas prisoner of the state (2019) and note to a friend (2023).
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Acknowledgements
before and after nature was commissioned by Bang on a Can; Stanford Live; Los Angeles Master Chorale; Helsinki Festival and Helsinki Chamber Choir; University of Illinois-Krannert Center for the Performing Arts; with generous support from Robert and Maria A. Skirnick, Stephen Block, Leslie Lassiter, Raulee Marcus, Susan and George Reardon, Elizabeth and Justus Schlichting, and Abby Sher.
Commissioned work is generously supported by Stanford Live Commissions and Programming Fund donors.
