February Performances at Stanford Live Includes the World-Premiere of before and after nature by David Lang, Bay Area Premiere of Immunity by Joshua Roman, and participatory theater piece FOOD by Geoff Sobelle
From left to right: Geoff Sobelle’s FOOD, photo credit: Maria Baranova. Cellist Joshua Roman, photo credit: Shervin Lainez. Composer David Lang, photo credit: Peter Sterling.
Stanford Live Presents FOOD from Geoff Sobelle ‘98 & World Premiere of before and after nature from David Lang ‘78
Stanford Live to Partner with Department of Medicine for Joshua Roman Residency & Performance with Stanford Medicine Orchestra
In February 2025, Stanford Live will present collaborations and performances with world-renowned Stanford University alumni and the Stanford University Department of Medicine.
Stanford alumnus, Grammy Award-winner, Oscar-nominee, and Pulitzer Prize-winning composer David Lang, ‘78, returns to his alma mater on Saturday, February 1, 2025 to present the world premiere of before and after nature, his new composition to be performed with the Los Angeles Master Chorale and the Bang on a Can (BOAC) All-Stars, the electrifying music ensemble he co-founded in 1992. Commissioned by Stanford Live specifically to bring Lang 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 to gain insight and inspiration. He combined what he learned with his own readings from the past 50 years of environmental thinking, and wrote his own texts that explore the different ways we define and understand nature. He set these texts for voices and the BOAC All-Stars and enlisted video pioneer Tal Rosner to invent a way to visualize the meanings of the music in video and projection.
Performer and theater artist Geoff Sobelle, ‘98, presents FOOD at Memorial Auditorium from Wednesday, February 5 to Saturday, February 8, 2025. An intimate audience of 220 people will gather around a gargantuan banquet table on the Memorial Auditorium stage for a culinary experience that is at once common and strange, human and surreal, universal and personal. FOOD is an absurdist, immersive, and rigorously designed meditation on how we eat, what’s in the soup, who pays the bill and asks us what missing link fell off the food chain to make us eat the way we do.
From February 10 to 13, 2025, cellist and composer Joshua Roman will be an artist-in-residence at Stanford University to facilitate master classes and discussions with the Stanford Medicine Orchestra. The Orchestra is composed of faculty, staff, and students from Stanford Medicine, Stanford Hospital, and Lucille Packard Children’s Hospital. The concert on Wednesday, February 12 at Bing Concert Hall features the Bay Area premiere of Immunity, an intimate musical exploration of Roman’s life-altering and inspiring experience of ongoing long COVID, with music ranging from J. S. Bach to George Crumb to Caroline Shaw, as well as Roman’s own compositions. The program combines performance and storytelling into an emotional journey, as the cellist confronts the impact of the illness and the limitations that nearly ended his career, before progressing through a period of doubt, struggle, refocus, and renewal, culminating in a profound acceptance of self and a deeper connection to what's most important in life. The second half of the concert features Saint Saëns’ breathtaking Cello Concerto No. 1 in A minor to be performed with the Stanford Medicine Orchestra.
About Stanford Live
Stanford Live presents a wide range of the finest performances from around the world, fostering a vibrant learning community and providing distinctive experiences through the performing arts. Crucially, Stanford Live supports the university’s focus on placing the arts at the heart of a Stanford education. With its home at Bing Concert Hall and Frost Amphitheater, Stanford Live draws on the breadth and depth of Stanford University to connect performance to the significant issues, ideas, and discoveries of our time.
Media Contact: Marshall Lamm, mlammpr@gmail.com, for interview requests, review access, and live performance photography.