It’s Bang on a Can Time!

So I was talking last week to my friend Jeff Brooks on the phone.  He had called to say he was coming to this year’s Marathon – he lives in Minneapolis and he often comes out even when we aren’t programming his music. He told me he was calling me at this time of the year because “it’s Bang on a Can time.”  After we got off the phone I thought that, with a little pumping up, that could make a nice rallying cry, and it made me happy.  It isn’t as aggressively dramatic as the Incredible Hulk’s “IT’S CLOBBERIN’ TIME” and it isn’t as advertisingly beer-swilling as “IT’S MILLER TIME” and it isn’t as bittersweet as “IT’S CLOSING TIME” and it isn’t as salivatingly Pavlovian as “IT’S DINNER TIME” and it isn’t as Buffalo Bob-ably marionettable as “IT’S HOWDY DOODY TIME” and it isn’t as All That Jazzedly Bob Fosse-an as “IT’S SHOWTIME, FOLKS,” but I do think it could make a nice rallying cry nonetheless.

And so:

“It’s Bang on a Can Time!”

Me personally, I always like this time – all the big decisions have been made, all the performers have their plane tickets and their visas, there is still a lot to do but it feels like we are mostly waiting around until the-last minute adrenaline kicks in. Since it isn’t yet the last minute, it feels great!

The Marathon is going to be a lot of fun – there is a lot I am looking forward to. Tortoise coming to New York, the All-Stars playing with Bill Frisell and Ryuichi Sakamoto, the Smith Quartet coming with some classic string music from the English-speaking regions of the planet.  Henry Grimes starting up his high-energy bass playing after 30 plus years off the instrument is an amazing story and I am going to want to check that out. And a lot of other great stuff, by many faces new and old.

For me I am very excited about all the collaborations between Bang on a Can and a slew of musicians from Denmark – we have a veritable Danish invasion this year. We have Athelas Sinfonietta Copenhagen and the chorus Ars Nova Copenhagen, playing a monumental piece by Julie, called THIRST, from an evening-length piece that Michael and Julie and I wrote for them last year, called WATER, free associating about the need for water in our lives, and the terrifying ways we may soon come to miss it. I am also happy to have an American premiere of a piece I wrote for the Ars Nova choir, conducted by the legendary Paul Hillier. It’s a list of all the metaphors in the Song of Songs, and is on my new CD. See you there?

XO,
David

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