Bang on a Can

My pieces are all narratives, not surface narratives that tell you what you are supposed to hear, but deeper narratives that tell you how things are made. My titles, as odd as they may be, are indications of what the narrative idea is that controls the formal relationships between the instruments. Spud, for example, is based on the life of the potato, how a potato changes across time. When you buy a potato, it is fully formed. When you look at it weeks later, it's got all these sprouts in different directions. All that's left of the potato is a shriveled sack. The purpose of Spud is to fall apart. That's what happens to the melody. It falls apart the way a potato falls apart. It starts off in a funny place, but it's a sad piece to me. On the one hand it's about growth, but it's also about decay. -David Lang