IAS Artist-in-Residence David Lang to Give Public Lecture on Patterns in Music

David Lang, Institute for Advanced Study Artist-in-Residence, will give a public lecture, “The Pattern Makers: Season 2,” on Wednesday, October 11. This lecture, which is sponsored by the Friends of the Institute for Advanced Study, will take place at 5:30 p.m. in Wolfensohn Hall on the Institute campus.

Lang is the recipient of the prestigious Pulitzer Prize (2008) for his piece The Little Match Girl Passion, which the New Yorker called “one of the most original and moving scores in years.” Based on a fable by Hans Christian Andersen and Lang’s own rewriting of the libretto to Bach’s St. Matthew’s Passion, the recording of the piece was also awarded a 2010 Grammy Award for Best Small Ensemble Performance. In addition to these works, Lang’s “Simple Song #3,” written as part of his score for Paolo Sorrentino’s acclaimed film Youth, received many award nominations in 2016, including an Academy Award and Golden Globe.

Lang’s works have been performed worldwide by distinguished artists and ensembles, including the BBC Symphony, the International Contemporary Ensemble, eighth blackbird, Santa Fe Opera, the New York Philharmonic, the Netherlands Chamber Choir, the Boston Symphony, the Munich Chamber Orchestra, and the Kronos Quartet.

Recent premieres include his opera the loser, which opened the 2016 Next Wave Festival at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and for which Lang served as composer, librettist, and stage director; the public domain for 1000 singers at Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival; his chamber opera anatomy theater at Los Angeles Opera and at the Prototype Festival in New York; and the concerto man made for the ensemble So Percussion and a consortium of orchestras, including the BBC Symphony and the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

A recipient of the prestigious Grammy Award, Lang has received numerous honors, including Musical America’s Composer of the Year, Carnegie Hall’s 2013­–14 Debs Composer’s Chair, the Rome Prize, the BMW Music-Theater Prize (Munich), and grants from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Foundation for ­Contemporary Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Lang is Professor of Music Composition at the Yale School of Music and is co-founder and co-artistic director of New York’s legendary music festival Bang on a Can.

This event is free and open to the public, but registration is required. To register for this event, click here. For more information on other public lectures and events at the Institute, visit http://www.ias.edu/events.