Ensemble Signal performs composer David Lang and filmmaker Bill Morrison's ninth collaboration, darker, in this multimedia performance.
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David Lang and Bill Morrison have collaborated on numerous projects over the years, including live ensemble performances with film projections Carbon Copy Building (The Kitchen, 2000), The New Yorkers (BAM Next Wave, 2003), Shelter (BAM Next Wave, 2005), and Anatomy Theater (LA Opera, 2016), as well as standalone films how to pray (2006), Back to the Soil (2014), let me come in (2021), The Village Detective: a song cycle (2021). darker is their ninth collaboration, spanning 24 years.
// This program is generously supported by Rachel and Daniel Widawsky.
From David:
darker is in many ways more like an object than a piece of music. An extreme exploration of emotional restraint, it is a long, slow passing from something mostly even and pleasant to something a little less pleasant. My piece, like life, expends a lot of effort to go a very short distance, from beautiful to a little less beautiful, from a little light to something a little darker.
darker is both highly detailed and relentlessly restrained, and it requires an almost superhuman focus in order to keep it moving, inexorably, towards its end. I am especially grateful to Brad Lubman, Lauren Radnofsky, and everyone in Ensemble Signal. My piece couldn't possibly work without their commitment, dedication and musicality.
From Bill:
With darker, I took inspiration from David’s minimal score to create a film that, like the music, can exist both before and under the viewer’s eyelids. A slowly, lilting depiction of the Sublime, where actors, dancers, and acrobats reappear and then disappear back into a bubbling morass of time.
darker
ensemble signal
david lang, music
bill morrison, film
brad lubman, conductor
About Bill Morrison
Bill Morrison has been called “the poet laureate of lost films” (New York Times, 9/21/2021), as he often makes films that reframe long-forgotten moving images. He has premiered feature-length films at the New York, Sundance, Telluride and Venice film festivals. He is best known for his found footage opus Decasia, 2002, for the documentary Dawson City: Frozen Time, 2016, and for his recent short film Incident, 2023. As a projection designer, Morrison has produced films to accompany theatrical and music performance for over 30 different productions since 1990. His work in live performance has been recognized with two Obies and a Bessie Award for theatrical design. Recent projection design credits include Double Bill, a collaboration with guitarist / composer Bill Frisell at Roulette, Brooklyn in June 2024; Angel Island, by Huang Ruo, produced by Beth Morrison Projects for Next Wave Festival / Prototype Festival in January 2024; and Antony and Cleopatra, by John Adams, at Barcelona Liceu in October 2023 and at San Francisco Opera, September 2022 (world premiere). Bill has collaborated numerous times with David Lang, including on The Village Detective: a song cycle (2021), let me come in (2021), Anatomy Theater (2015), Back to the Soil (2014), how to pray (2006), and Shelter (2005).
About David Lang
David Lang is one of America's most highly esteemed and performed composers. Lang’s score for Paolo Sorrentino’s film Youth received Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations, among others. the little match girl passion, commissioned by Carnegie Hall for Paul Hillier and Theatre of Voices, was lauded by The Guardian as “one of the top 25 works of classical music written in the 21st Century.” It won the Pulitzer Prize in 2008 and the recording received a Grammy Award in 2010. His opera prisoner of the state (with libretto by Lang) was co-commissioned by the New York Philharmonic, Rotterdam’s De Doelen, London’s Barbican Centre, Barcelona’s l’Auditori, Bochum Symphony Orchestra, Bruges’s Concertgebouw, and Malmö Opera, and premiered June 2019 in New York, conducted by Jaap van Zweden. Lang is a Professor of Music Composition at the Yale School of Music. He is co-founder and co-artistic director of New York’s legendary music collective Bang on a Can.