David Lang: before and after nature - Bang on a Can All-Stars & Helsinki Chamber Choir -
20.8.2025 at 18.00
Erkko Hall, Dance House Helsinki
Duration approx. 1 H
Post-concert discussion at approximately 19.15 in the lobby of Dance House Helsinki. Composer David Lang and Johanna Freundlich, Artistic Director of Helsinki Festival, will take part in the discussion.
Programme & Credits
David Lang
before and after nature
before us
things that never were
what is a mountain (after john muir)
sunray
last forever
sea change (after john f. kennedy)
soft rains
David Lang, text and music
Tal Rosner, video and visual design
Bang on a Can All-Stars
Lizzie Burns, bass
Vicky Chow, piano
David Cossin, percussion
Arlen Hlusko, cello
Taylor Levine, guitars
Ken Thomson, clarinets
Andrew Cotton, sound design
Helsinki Chamber Choir, cond. Nils Schweckendiek
Soprano
Linnéa Sundfær Casserly
Elisa Huovinen
Sanna Korpi
Anna-Elina Norjanen
Kirsi Tunkkari
Alto
Eira Karlson
Sabrina Ljungberg
Emmi Saulamaa
Inga Sauranen
Emma Suszko
Tenor
Martti Anttila
Jaime Belmonte
Mats Lillhannus
Aarne Mansikka
Joel Ward
Bass
Juhana Kotilainen
Riku Laurikka
Jussi Linnanmäki
Antti Vahtola
Juhani Vesikkala
Technical team for video and projection:
Brandon Kraemer, technical director
David Shepherd, programming
Dale Croft, Darren Culley, assistants
Special thanks to Tali Oliver
Commissioned by:
Bang on a Can, Stanford Live, Los Angeles Master Chorale, Helsinki Festival, Helsinki Chamber Choir, and the University of Illinois-Krannert Center for the Performing Arts.
Supported by:
Robert and Maria A. Skirnick, Stephen Block, Leslie Lassiter, Raulee Marcus, Susan and George Reardon, Elizabeth and Justus Schlichting, Abby Sher.
In co-operation with:
Jane and Aatos Erkko Foundation
Forewords
David Lang
“Nature is all around us. Of course, that has always been true but it seems like we may all be paying a little more attention to it than we used to. At least, I hope so! But for all the attention paid, it doesn’t seem to help us agree on how to change our relationship to it, or to change it very much.
My piece is a meditation on nature, but mostly on one aspect of it – our limitations in seeing and understanding the world around us. Descriptions of the void in various creation myths, impossible propositions, examples of people who are only able to describe the natural world through traditionally religious or spiritual means. It doesn’t seem like we can look at nature without distorting it, by putting ourselves in the picture.
The idea of ‘nature’ is a human construct – our ancestors noticed we were apart from the world around us, and then gave that ‘apartness’ its name, its meaning, its value. I thought if I could think hard enough about the world, both before we were here to name it and after we are gone, I might be able to learn more about what the world might want from us, or from me.
The texts in my piece all deal with three basic questions: where the world is to us before we are here, where we are in more recent memory, and where we will be when we aren’t here any longer.
Obviously, the before and after are unknowable, and, in truth, most of what we see in nature we don’t truly understand. It seems we can really only describe the things we don’t know by using the terms of things we do. This paradox may explain how the seeing of different things around us can lead us all to valuing – or undervaluing – these things in such radically different ways.
In preparation to write the words and music for before and after nature, I spent many hours in conversation with students, faculty and staff at Stanford University. I am grateful to all of them for their insights, their passion, and their time. “
Tal Rosner (video & visual design)
“The video element in before and after nature is an ever-evolving collage in motion that presents, deconstructs, and reassembles multiple viewpoints of the natural world as we (think we) know it. In a danse macabre between the dystopian and cautious optimism, I bend geographic conventions and put our perceptions of nature to the test—at which point do we start subjectifying a landscape? Could I capture the magnitude of geological shifts while keeping tabs on hope?
With sources ranging from planetary to domestic, my digital assemblages fuse the telescopic and microscopic to create imaginary environments where sun spots, cloud formations and the ocean surface are superimposed, stretched, colour-shifted and abstracted to the extent of leaving mere trails of their essence, engaging the viewer in a continuous game of un- and re-learning the Elements.
Capturing the mood of each musical section was also paramount to me, whether it is pictorially, rhythmically, or both. I’m deeply interested in making audiences not only “see” the design, but also “feel” the video through its pacing, transitions and edited textures.
My work is suggestive and reflective, it is a personal exploration of the oscillating cycles defining both nature and human existence—evoking their instability, as well as their awesome inertia: nothing is fixed, the vortex spins, and there is beauty everywhere.”