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love fail (2012) 60'

Text by David Lang (after Lydia Davis, Marie de France, Gottfried von Strassburg, Béroul, Thomas of Britain and Richard Wagner)

SSAA playing simple percussion instruments

love fail was co-commissioned by The Brooklyn Academy of Music’s 2012 Next Wave Festival, The International Festival of Arts & Ideas, The John F. Kennedy Center Abe Fortas Memorial Fund, The Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA, The Secrest Artists Series at Wake Forest University, and Hancher Performances at the University of Iowa. Movement 4, 'the wood and the vine', was commissioned by The Newman Center for the Performing Arts at University of Denver, The University of California at Riverside, and the Santa Fe Concert Association in Santa FE, NM. Movement 10, 'I live in pain', in a different version, was originally written for “TheCrossing,” Donald Nally, conductor.

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works

love fail – arr. female chorus (2012, rev. 2016) 60'

Text by David Lang (after Lydia Davis, Marie de France, Gottfried von Strassburg, Béroul, Thomas of Britain and Richard Wagner)

SSAA chorus (or 8 solo women singers) playing simple percussion instruments

The Brooklyn Academy of Music’s 2012 Next Wave Festival, The International Festival of Arts & Ideas, The John F. Kennedy Center Abe Fortas Memorial Fund, The Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA, The Wake Forest University / Secrest Artists Series, and Hancher Performances at the University of Iowa

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‘true pearl’ premieres at Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum

David Lang’s true pearl: an opera in five tapestries (with libretto by Sybil Kempson), is inspired by Isabella Stewart Gardner’s sixteenth-century tapestries that tell the story of the first king of Persia, Cyrus the Great. The five-part “in-ear opera” is a private experience, available only through headphones in the Museum’s Tapestry Room. The “stage set” for each scene is an individual tapestry from the Cyrus series, and listeners are immediately immersed into tales of empire building and passion…

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works

prisoner of the state (2019) 75'

soprano, tenor, baritone, bass; men's chorus; 2+pic.2.2(bcl).2+cbn/4.2[in C].2.0/timp/3 perc/strings

New York Philharmonic, de Doelen Concert Hall, Barbican Centre, l’Auditori, Bochum Symphony Orchestra, Concertgebouw Bruges, and Malmö Opera.

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sun-centered (2022) 25'

chamber choir

Commissioned for the Tallis Scholars by Cal Performances, Carnegie Hall Corporation, Hopkins Center, John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Stanford Live, Virginia Tech and Concertgebouw Bruges (Belgium).

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the little match girl passion (2007) 35'

Text by David Lang (after H.C. Andersen, H.P. Paulli, Picander and Saint Matthew)

4 voices (SATB) each playing simple percussion

Carnegie Hall Corporation and The Perth Theater and Concert Hall for Paul Hillier and Theatre of Voices

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