Bang on a Can Summer Music Festival

Three decades ago, composers Michael Gordon, David Lang, and Julia Wolfe noticed something missing in the universe of music: a zone between rock, jazz, classical, and folk where new forms of musical expression could find new audiences and new players. A composer combining electric guitar, exuberant percussion, and classical instrumentation needed a place to collaborate with a musician experimenting with minimal beats and Appalachian fiddling. So they invented a new world of music, and called it Bang on a Can.

When Bang on a Can was searching for a place to roll out their own summer festival, they wanted to draw connections between groundbreaking music and groundbreaking art; they knew their listeners were perhaps more likely to emerge from Chelsea art galleries than from a conventional symphony hall, and would perhaps be more at home at a rock music festival than a traditional opera house. For most of the month of July, for 17 years now, Bang on a Can has been expanding their world of music on the MASS MoCA campus—presenting dozens of concerts in our courtyards and galleries, and on our stages. Sometimes elaborately staged, sometimes raw and vividly improvisational, the music is always powerful and fresh (and frequently impossible to describe).

Pop-up performances most days at 1:30pm and 4:30pm.