PERHAPS A GIFT VOUCHER FOR MUM?: MOTHER'S DAY

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English
Oxford University Press Inc
18 March 2021
Amidst the heated fray of the Culture Wars emerged a scrappy festival in downtown New York City called Bang on a Can. Presenting eclectic, irreverent marathons of experimental music in crumbling venues on the Lower East Side, Bang on a Can sold out concerts for a genre that had been long considered box office poison. Through the 1980s and 1990s, three young, visionary composers--David Lang, Michael Gordon, and Julia Wolfe--nurtured Bang on a Can into a multifaceted organization with a major record deal, a virtuosic in-house ensemble, and a seat at the table at Lincoln Center, and in the process changed the landscape of avant-garde music in the United States.

Bang on a Can captured a new public for new music. But they did not do so alone. As the twentieth century came to a close, the world of American composition pivoted away from the insular academy and towards the broader marketplace. In the wake of the unexpected popularity of Steve Reich and Philip Glass, classical presenters looked to contemporary music for relevance and record labels scrambled to reap its potential profits, all while government funding was imperilled by the evangelical right. Other institutions faltered amidst the vagaries of late capitalism, but the renegade Bang on a Can survived--and thrived--in a tumultuous and idealistic moment that made new music what it is today.

By:  
Imprint:   Oxford University Press Inc
Country of Publication:   United States
Dimensions:   Height: 150mm,  Width: 211mm,  Spine: 15mm
Weight:   564g
ISBN:   9780190068653
ISBN 10:   0190068655
Pages:   320
Publication Date:  
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Undergraduate
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active

William Robin is an assistant professor of musicology at the University of Maryland's School of Music. He has published work on contemporary music, orchestral culture, and early American hymns in the Journal of the American Musicological Society, Musical Quarterly, and the Journal of Musicology, and he contributes regularly to The New York Times.

Reviews for Industry: Bang on a Can and New Music in the Marketplace

Sparks vital conversation about what music based on solidarity might one day look like. -- The Wire In the past decade, William Robin has established himself not only as one of America's most formidable younger musicologists but also as an incisive, eloquent writer in the public sphere. His study of Bang on a Can gives lavish evidence of his multisided brilliance: it is at once an absorbing historical narrative and an exacting work of critical analysis. No scholar or fan of contemporary American music can do without it. -- Alex Ross William Robin breaks important new ground with this thick historical and ethnographic description of how networks of ensembles, institutions, listeners, and new technologies come together to forge new experimental music communities and marketplaces. Much more than a history of a new music ensemble, this book incisively chronicles a larger movement aimed at revitalizing expression, reception, and diversity in contemporary American classical music. -- George E. Lewis, author of A Power Stronger Than Itself:A The AACM and American Experimental Music


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