North Adams - Each year MASS MoCA and Bang on a Can offer intensive training in new music to a select group of emerging musicians. Gallery visitors will find music everywhere from July 13 through July 30 with daily gallery recitals and practice sessions.
A perennial highlight of the festival is the Bang on a Can All-Stars concert and this fourth year is sure to be no exception. The stunning Bang on a Can All-Stars will perform on Saturday, July 23, a concert featuring Brian Eno’s Music for Airports at 8 P.M. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer described the All-Stars as “not a rock band, not a jazz combo, not a chamber ensemble. It’s all three, only different.â€
“Eno’s seminal work was created using recorded tracks, but the All-Stars is the one perfect combo to bring this music to life,†said Joseph Thompson, MASS MoCA’s director. Best known for his Music For Airports album, work with Roxy Music, and collaborations with David Byrne and the Talking Heads, Eno is credited with creating ambient music and pioneering recording techniques now considered essential for hip-hop, rap, and electronica.
Born in Woodbridge, England, in 1948, Brian Eno was raised in rural Suffolk, where the radio station of a nearby U.S. Air Force base exposed him to doo-wop and early rock & roll from a young age. At art school, studying the principles of conceptual painting and sound sculpture, he was introduced to the music of contemporary composers John Tilbury, Cornelius Cardew, and minimalists John Cage, LaMonte Young, and Terry Riley but particularly Steve Reich's tape orchestration It's Gonna Rain. It was there that Eno began experimenting with tape recorders, which he considers his first musical instrument.
The next several years were spent working with avant-garde performance art troupe Merchant Taylor's Simultaneous Cabinet, improvisational rock unit Maxwell Demon, Cardew's Scratch Orchestra, the Portsmouth Sinfonia, and finally seminal glam band Roxy Music. In 1973 he recorded No Pussyfooting with Robert Fripp where he developed a tape-delay system, dubbed "Frippertronics," treating Fripp's guitar with looped delays in order to use studio technology as a means of musical composition, creating the groundwork for the current dominance of sampling in hip-hop and electronica.
In 1975 a car accident left Eno bedridden for months, unable to move even enough to turn up his stereo to hear the music above the sound of a rainstorm. Realizing that music could assume the properties of light or color, blending into the atmosphere rather than overtaking it, Eno created his most significant innovation: ambient music, which he explored and perfected with his next several releases: Another Green World, Discreet Music (the first in a ten-volume series), Music For Films, and ultimately Music For Airports.
The Bang on a Can All-Stars are: Robert Black, David Cossin, Lisa Moore, Mark Stewart, Wendy Sutter, and Evan Ziporyn. They freely cross classical, jazz, rock, world, and experimental music. This six-member ensemble from New York is known worldwide for unparalleled performances of today’s most innovative music, defining styles so new they’re yet to be named.
Bassist Robert Black works with his computer-assisted duo, Basso Bongo, composing and commissioning composers. He frequently collaborates with Yoshiko Chuma and her post-modern dance company, The School of Hard Knocks. He tours playing solo performances around the world including Japan, Brazil, Europe, and North America. Black still finds the time to teach at the FUNDEC de Eleazar de Carvalho in Brazil and his alma mater, Hartt School in Hartford, Connecticut.
David Cossin studied classical percussion at the Manhattan School of Music. He specializes in new and experimental music, and has recorded and performed internationally with groups including Talujon Percussion Quartet, NewBand (on the Harry Partch instrumentarium), New Music Consort, Yo-Yo Ma, Tan Dun, Bo Didley, and B-blush. Numerous theater projects include Peony Pavilion, Blue Man Group, The Lion King, and Mabou Mines. Cossin was the solo percussionist for films like Fallen and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, which won the Academy Award for best musical score. He has performed solo concerts throughout Europe and the United States, incorporating video, electronic processing, and homemade instruments. Cossin appeared on the television shows Good Morning America and CBS’ The Early Show with Yo Yo Ma.
Raised in Australia, Lisa Moore is the resident pianist for the Da Capo Chamber Players and has performed with the New York City Ballet, Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, St Luke’s Orchestra, BargeMusic, Cassatt String Quartet, ISCM, Alpha Centauri, Steve Reich Ensemble, Australia Ensemble, Sydney Symphony, Albany Symphony, and the Australian Chamber Orchestra. She’s performed at Carnegie Hall, Royal Albert Hall, La Scola, the Musikverein and at festivals in Adelaide, Israel, Warsaw, Holland, Southbank, Palermo, Paris d’Automne, Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Next Wave, Sydney’s Olympic Arts and Tanglewood.
Since multi-instrumentalist Mark Stewart’s mother taught music, he grew up experimenting with handmade African drums, harmoniums, xylophones, guitars, banjos, violins, cellos and hundreds of others before he was in school. He studied guitar and cello during his conservatory days before moving to New York. Now he works mainly with electric guitar. He regularly performs with Fred Frith, Anthony Braxton, Steve Reich, and Zeena Parkins.
Cellist Wendy Sutter began playing at age five and made her solo debut with the Seattle Symphony at sixteen. She has participated in festivals at Marlboro, Aspen, and Evian and was awarded first prize in the Juilliard cello competition. She made her New York solo concerto debut at Avery Fisher Hall and has participated as soloist or ensemble player with the Lincoln Center Chamber Music Society, the Mostly Mozart Festival at Lincoln Center, the ensemble Sospeso, the Seattle International Chamber Music Festival and New York’s Music Today series. She’s toured with Mikhail Baryshnikov and performed an onstage duet with him at Lincoln Center.
Clarinetist Evan Ziporyn’s work is informed by his 20-year involvement with the traditional music of Bali. He is founder and director of Boston’s Gamelan Galak Tika. He co-produced and arranged Bang on a Can’s acclaimed recording of Brian Eno’s Music for Airports. As part of the Steve Reich Ensemble, he shared a 1999 Grammy for the recording of Music for 18 Musicians. Other collaborators include the Kronos Quartet, The Netherlands Wind Ensemble, Ensemble Modern, Tan Dun, Wu Man, Basso Bongo, Paul Simon and Red Fish Blue Fish. A professor at MIT, Ziporyn has also taught at the Yale School of Music, New England Conservatory, and the University of California.
For the Bang on a Can Summer Music Festival, some of the world’s most renowned musicians and composers hold open classes throughout the MASS MoCA complex. The Festival will close on Saturday, July 30, with a Bang on a Can Marathon performance by both teachers and students featuring guest composer Steve Reich.
Tickets for Bang on a Can Opening Concert are $22. MASS MoCA members receive a 10% discount. Special discounted tickets for both this concert and the Marathon concert on July 30 can be purchased for just $35. Tickets are available through the MASS MoCA Box Office located off Marshall Street in North Adams from 10 A.M. until 6 P.M. daily in July and August. Tickets can also be charged by phone by calling 413.662.2111 during Box Office hours or purchased on line at www.massmoca.org.
Bang on a Can is a New York-based organization dedicated to creating a forum for the most innovative and adventurous music of our time. They aim to discover emerging composers and ensembles who are exploring new musical territories and reaching for a musical expression beyond the status quo. Their programming incorporates visionary classics written not more than three decades ago -- exciting music by our best known living composers and by those only starting to gain recognition.
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Lanesborough Town Meeting to Vote Budget, Bylaws & Vehicle Purchases
By Breanna SteeleiBerkshires Staff
LANESBOROUGH, Mass. — Tuesday's annual town meeting includes a $14 million operating budget, new short-term rentals, accessory dwelling units and sign bylaws, and free cash article appropriations.
Voters will gather at Lanesborough Elementary School on June 9 at 6 p.m. to decide on 20 warrant articles.
The fiscal 2027 budget is up a little over 10 percent. Some of the main increases are the Mount Greylock Regional School District and McCann Technical School: the McCann assessment is up more than 30 percent based on factors including enrollment and the school renovation project, and Mount Greylock's is up 11 percent.
Article 11 is for the town to vote to approve from free cash the sum of $16,298.48 for the McCann Technical School roof and window replacement project so as not to impact the budget. Article 3 is appropriate $7,586,284 for Mount Greylock Regional School assessment.
Another notable increase was in life and health insurance, showing an increase of about 26 percent.
Ambulance Director Jen Weber is planning 24-hour coverage, which means more staff and a hike in her budget. One of the articles asks the town to appropriate $234,100 to operate the Ambulance Enterprise Fund for salaries and expenses.
Many town departments are looking for new vehicles. The Fire Department is looking to replace its outdated 1996 fire engine. There are two articles related to the truck at a total of $813,366. Article 12 would transfer $225,000 from free cash into the Fire Truck Stabilization Fund; Article 13 would transfer $605,000 from the fund and authorize the borrowing of $208,366.08.
The total includes a $100,000 contingency cost to cover any additional costs if a 2026 model-year chassis cannot be secured before new emissions standards go into effect in 2027.
The board at its last meeting moved the $225,000 transfer to come before the borrowing article, changing the stabilization number. If the $225,000 is not voted on, then they will amend the next article's number on the floor, subtracting the $225,000. This shows the borrowing number significantly lower.
Article 17 asks for the transfer of $80,000 from free cash to replace a police cruiser.
Police Chief Rob Derksen's aim is to replace one vehicle every other year, meaning the oldest vehicle gets replaced about every 10 years.
He stressed that if delayed this year, the town may have to double up in a future year to get back on schedule, and that paying later usually costs more. The article will ask for $80,000 from free cash, the vehicles used to be funded by the BHRD.
Lastly, the Highway Department is looking to replace a 2014 International dump truck that will be a total of $330,000 and will take two to three years to receive.
Money will be used from last year's approval of $250,000 from free cash for the replacement of a 2012 highway front-end loader that was underspent $49,261. Town meeting is being asked to approve a transfer of $53,274.85 from free cash and the use of $227,464 from funds from the Sale of Town Real Estate to fund the balance.
Other free cash proposals include $1,200 to purchase software to support tracking and ongoing maintenance schedules of town-owned vehicles; $42,000 for the replacement of the Highway Department's storage shed roof, $200,000 to reduce the tax levy.
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