Bang on a Can All-Stars
Formed in 1987 by composers Michael Gordon, David Lang, and Julia Wolfe, Bang on a Can is
dedicated to commissioning, performing, creating, presenting, and recording contemporary
music. With an ear for the new, the unknown, and the unconventional, Bang on a Can strives
to make exciting and innovative music accessible to new audiences worldwide.
Bang on a Can has been building audiences for 24 years, growing from a one-day festival
into a renowned and multifaceted new-music powerhouse. Current projects include the annual
Bang on a Can Marathon; the People's Commissioning Fund, a program to commission emerging
composers; the Bang on a Can All-Stars, who tour to major festivals and concert venues
around the world; the Bang on a Can Summer Music Festival at MASS MoCA, a professional
development program for young composers and performers; Asphalt Orchestra, Bang on a Can's
new high-energy street band that offers mobile performances of unusual music, taking it to
neighborhoods across New York City and beyond; Found Sound Nation, a promising new
technology-based musical outreach program in NYC schools; and cross-disciplinary
collaborations with DJs, visual artists, choreographers, and filmmakers.
For up-to-date information regarding Bang on a Can programs, events, and CD releases, visit
our bangonacan.org.
Ashley Bathgate
A native of Saratoga Springs, New York, cellist Ashley Bathgate has gained international
renown as a soloist and chamber musician. Equally at home in both the concert hall and the
rock club, Bathgate focuses on presenting concerts that draw from a wide range of musical
genres. Her dedication to performing classical music is equally matched by her passion to
promote new music by today's composers. She is a member of the Metropolis Ensemble and two
chamber groups of which she is a founding member: TwoSense and Typical Music. She has
recorded for Nonesuch, Naxos, Cantaloupe Music, Albany Records, and La-La Land Records.
Bathgate received her bachelor's degree from Bard College and a master's degree from Yale
University, where she studied with Aldo Parisot. She lives in Manhattan. Visit
ashleybathgate.com for more information.
Robert Black
Growing up in suburban America during the 1960s and '70s, Robert Black's main musical
experiences came from the radio, records, and the music program in the public school
system. Today, his interests range from traditional orchestral and chamber music to solo
recitals, collaborations with actors, music with computers, movement-based improvisations
with dancers, and live action-painting performances with artists. He has commissioned,
collaborated, or performed with John Cage, DJ Spooky, Elliott Carter, Meredith Monk, Cecil
Taylor, Paquito d'Rivera, and many young emerging composers. A founding member of the
All-Stars, Black's recital activities frequently take him to five continents, and he has
appeared at major festivals, on radio and television broadcasts, and as an
artist-in-residence. He also performs with the Hartford Symphony Orchestra and the
Monadnock Festival Orchestra. Black maintains a full teaching schedule at The Hartt School
at the University of Hartford and the Festival Eleazar de Carvalho in Brazil, and he is a
faculty member of the Manhattan School of Music's Contemporary Performance Program. His
solo CDs are State of the Bass (O.O. Discs), The Complete Bass Music of
Christian Wolff (Mode Records), The Complete Bass Music of Giacinto (Mode
Records), and an upcoming two-CD set of mid-20th-century American bass music.
Vicky Chow
Canadian pianist Vicky Chow has performed extensively as a classical and contemporary
soloist, chamber musician, and ensemble member. Her passion has propelled her to work with
a variety of leading composers and musicians, including John Adams, Louis Andriessen, Bryce
Dessner (The National), Philip Glass, Michael Gordon, Glenn Kotche (Wilco), David
Longstreth (Dirty Projectors), David Lang, Steve Reich, Terry Riley, Lee Ranaldo (Sonic
Youth), Julia Wolfe, and Evan Ziporyn. Chow has performed across Canada, the US, China, and
Europe, and in the past year has toured with the Bang on a Can All-Stars to Australia, Hong
Kong, London, and Portugal, collaborated with Kronos Quartet, and performed with New Music
Detroit and eighth blackbird. Upcoming tours include performances in Poland, Germany,
Scotland, and France. Her first solo piano album-of music composed by Ryan Francis-has been
released on the Tzadik label. She has also recorded for the Cantaloupe and altzVoz labels.
In addition to performing, Chow produces and curates Contagious Sounds, a new-music series
that focuses on adventurous contemporary artists and composers at the Gershwin Hotel in New
York City. Originally from Vancouver, Chow studied at The Juilliard School with Yoheved
Kaplinsky and Julian Martin before continuing studies at Manhattan School of Music with
Christopher Oldfather. She lives in New York City.
David Cossin
David Cossin was born and raised in Queens, New York, and studied classical percussion at
the Manhattan School of Music. His interest in classical percussion, drum set, non-Western
hand drumming, composition, and improvisation has led to performances across a broad
spectrum of musical and artistic forms to incorporate new media with percussion. Cossin has
recorded and performed internationally with composers and ensembles, including Steve Reich,
Philip Glass, Yo-Yo Ma, Meredith Monk, Tan Dun, Cecil Taylor, Talujon Percussion Quartet,
and Real Quiet. Numerous theater projects include collaborations with Blue Man Group, Mabou
Mines, and director Peter Sellars. Cossin was featured as the percussion soloist in Tan
Dun's Grammy- and Oscar-winning score to Ang Lee's film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.
Most recently, Cossin is happy to have performed with Sting on his latest world tour,
Symphonicity. Cossin has performed as a soloist with orchestras throughout the world,
including the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, The Saint
Paul Chamber Orchestra, São Paulo State Symphony, Sydney Symphony, Gothenburg Symphony,
Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra, and Singapore Symphony Orchestra. Cossin's sonic
installations have been presented in New York, Italy, and Germany. He is also an active
composer and has invented several new instruments, which expand the limits of traditional
percussion. He is the curator for the Sound Res Festival, an experimental music festival in
southern Italy, and also teaches percussion at Queens College in New York City.
Derek Johnson
Derek Johnson is a composer, electric guitarist, and educator active in the world of
contemporary concert music and beyond. Born and raised at the majestic base of the Rocky
Mountains in Boulder, Colorado, Johnson began his college training as an electric guitarist
at Columbia College Chicago and completed graduate degrees in composition at Indiana
University's Jacobs School of Music. He is a founding member of the virtuoso chamber
ensemble BASILICA and a regular performer with the post-rock improvisation collective
goodhands team. Deeply engaged in the emerging position of the electric guitar in concert
music, Johnson is active as both a soloist and chamber musician, presenting the rich and
steadily growing canon of works written specifically for the electric guitar. His
compositions have been performed throughout the US and Canada by leading soloists and
ensembles, including the Chicago Symphony Orchestra's MusicNOW and Montreal's Nouvel
Ensemble Moderne. He has served as a faculty member in the music department of Columbia
College Chicago, as an associate instructor of composition at Indiana University, and as
chamber music faculty at the Bang on a Can Summer Institute. He is currently an assistant
professor of music theory and composition at the Ball State University School of Music, and
is the director of the BSU Electric Guitar Quartet. Johnson is an avid transcriber and is
currently working in collaboration with the innovative Swedish band Meshuggah on a series
of transcription books that encompass the band's complete discography.
Evan Ziporyn
Evan Ziporyn makes music at the crossroads between genres and cultures, East and West. He
studied at Eastman School of Music; Yale University; and University of California,
Berkeley. A chance hearing of gamelan music led him to Bali in 1981; he returned there on a
Fulbright in 1987, and has since sojourned there repeatedly to study, perform, and
collaborate. Also in 1987, Ziporyn performed a clarinet solo at the first Bang on a Can
Marathon in New York. He co-founded the All-Stars in 1992, and his involvement with Bang on
a Can continues to this day. Ziporyn joined the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
faculty in 1990 and is currently the Kenan Sahin Distinguished Professor. He founded
Gamelan Galak Tika at MIT in 1993, beginning a series of groundbreaking compositions for
gamelan and Western instruments. These include three evening-length works, 2001's
ShadowBang, 2004's Oedipus Rex, and 2009's A House in Bali-an
opera that joins Western singers with Balinese traditional performers, and the All-Stars
with a full gamelan. As a clarinetist, Ziporyn recorded the definitive version of Steve
Reich's multi-clarinet New York Counterpoint in 1996, and shared in the Reich
Ensemble's Best Chamber Music Performance Grammy in 1998. In 2001, his solo CD, This Is
Not a Clarinet, made recommendation lists across the country. His compositions have
been commissioned by Yo-Yo Ma's Silk Road Project, Kronos Quartet, American Composers
Orchestra, Maya Beiser, So Percussion, Wu Man, Orkest de Volharding, and the Boston Modern
Orchestra Project. He received the 2007 USA Artists Walker Award and the 2004 American
Academy of Arts and Letters Goddard Lieberson Fellowship.