Yale Choral Artists and Bang on a Can Ensemble

       before and after nature - David Lang | Professional Ensemble

Program note by David Lang:

before and after nature is a piece about our relationship to our surroundings, natural and otherwise. It is a piece that investigates its own environment, which means how it looks and feels in performance will dramatically affect its impact. A successful performance should take into account what the performance will look like, how the performers are placed in relation to the space and to each other, and how whatever added visual or theatrical elements enhance the overall experience.

I intentionally made the piece so the music and performance could be visualized, specifically as a proposition to the artist and designer Tal Rosner, whose projection work I have long admired. I sent Tal each movement as I completed it, along with prompts about what had motivated it. The motivations are different for each movement—descriptions of the time before the creation of the universe, according to over 50 different creation myths; the conflation of seeing a mountain and seeing god; the physicalization of a shaft of sunlight, etc. Tal took each of these motivations as a different starting point, making something abstract but consciously related to each move- ment, in a way that not only flows in harmony with the music but is also spectacular to watch.

I can easily imagine how Tal or other designers in the future might push the relationship be- tween music and visuals even farther, making a performance that is even more environmental and immersive.

   Jeffrey Douma, conductor