PRESS RELEASE
From Faith Wilson Arts Publicity
020 7635 8775
0794 113 7453
faith@faithwilsonartspublicity.com
CROWD OUT
by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer DAVID LANG
Music Director: SIMON HALSEY
Epic event for 1000 shouting, whispering, chanting voices
will be heard in Birmingham, Berlin and London
June 2014
Presented by:
- Birmingham Contemporary Music Group (June 8 – World Premiere)
- Berlin Philharmonic (June 14 & 15)
- Spitalfields Music (June 21)
We want your voice in the crowd!
With this call to arms, recruiting has begun in Birmingham, Berlin and London
for an epic event that anyone, irrespective of musical experience, can perform – for 1000
‘shouting, yelling, whispering and chanting’ voices.
Crowd Out is the concept of Pulitzer Prize-winning American composer David Lang,
who first began discussing his ambitious plans with Birmingham Contemporary Music
Group in 2008.
Crowd Out, which launches with a Discovery Weekend in Birmingham (November 1-3),
will reach its climax in June 2014 with performances in Birmingham, Berlin and London.
Influences for Lang’s Crowd Out encompass a wide range of public singing and
vocalising, including football chanting – the idea first came to him during a match at
Arsenal FC’s old Highbury Stadium. The common theme that emerges is the sense of
community created through performance.
The result, says David Lang, is an entirely new kind of piece and a serious musical work
that anyone can perform.
It has taken a full five years - and much planning, preparation and fundraising* – for
Lang’s project to become a reality and, in a case of international artistic collaboration,
Crowd Out has been jointly commissioned by BCMG, the Education Programme of the
Berlin Philharmonic and Spitalfields Music.
A total of 3000 participants from the three cities, together with musicians, producers,
directors and production teams in Birmingham, Berlin and London will be led by David
Lang and internationally acclaimed choral conductor Simon Halsey. Each organisation
is working with local choirs and individuals to build its own ‘home-grown’ Crowd Out
company to rehearse and perform the piece.
Enlarging on the beginnings of Crowd Out, David Lang said:
"The texts all come from things people reveal on the internet about how they feel about
being in a crowd - and every sentence begins with the word "I" because that is what
interests me about being in a crowd, how you keep or lose your ability to be an individual.
The idea of 1000 people yelling "I AM ALONE" somehow makes me very happy”.
David Lang himself will be performing as part of each city’s community of 1000 voices,
“yelling as loud as everyone else’” because “I’m interested in building a community of
people and being in this community once it is built”.
Each staging of Crowd Out will be dramatically different – from the huge glass-atrium of
Birmingham’s landmark Millennium Point where Crowd Out receives its World
Premiere performances (Sunday, June 8), the giant outdoor piazza linking Berlin’s
Kulturforum (Saturday June 14 & Sunday June 15), to East London’s iconic Arnold
Circus and bandstand at the centre of Britain’s first public housing scheme (Saturday,
June 21, 2014).
Millennium Point, Birmingham, London Symphony Orchestra’s LSO Discovery
Programme, Tower Hamlets Arts & Music Education Service (music hub for Tower
Hamlets and the City of London) and Barbican Guildhall Creative Learning Division
are amongst Crowd Out’s delivery partners.
Watch David Lang talking about his vision for Crowd Out:
http://www.bcmg.org.uk/watch-and-listen/
* Crowd Out is commissioned by Birmingham Contemporary Music Group with financial assistance from
Arts Council England West Midlands and individuals through BCMG’s Sound Investment scheme;
Spitalfields Music with major funding support from Arts Council England and financial assistance from its
New Music Commission Fund; and the Education Programme of the Berliner Philharmoniker, supported by
Deutsche Bank.
CROWD OUT PERFORMANCE DATES AND VENUES
Sunday, June 8, 2014 at 2.30pm & 4.30pm (World Premiere)
BIRMINGHAM - Millennium Point, Birmingham (indoors)
Saturday June 14 & Sunday June 15, 2014 at 7pm
BERLIN - Piazzetta, Kulturforum, Berlin (outdoors)
Saturday, June 21, 2014 - (two performances – 3.30pm & 6.30pm)
LONDON - Arnold Circus, London E1 (outdoors)
PRESS CONTACTS
Faith Wilson, Birmingham Contemporary Music Group PR
020 7635 8775
07941 137453
faith@faithwilsonartspublicity.com
Sophie Cohen, Spitalfields Music PR
020 7428 9850
07711 551 787
sophiecohen@blueyonder.co.uk
NOTES FOR EDITORS - about the artists and commissioners
David Lang
http://davidlangmusic.com
Passionate, prolific, and complicated, composer David Lang embodies the restless spirit of invention. Lang
is at the same time deeply versed in the classical tradition and committed to music that resists categorization,
constantly creating new forms.
‘There is no name yet for this kind of music’, writes Los Angeles Times music critic Mark Swed about David
Lang, but audiences around the globe are hearing more and more of his work: in performances at the
Brooklyn Academy of Music, Santa Fe Opera, by the New York Philharmonic, the San Francisco Symphony,
The Cleveland Orchestra, and the Kronos Quartet; at Tanglewood, the BBC Proms, and the Almeida,
Holland, Berlin, Strasbourg and Huddersfield Festivals; in theatre and dance productions in New York, San
Francisco, Paris and London; and at Lincoln Center, the South Bank Centre, Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy
Center, the Barbican Centre, and the Brooklyn Academy of Music.
Recent projects include: The Little Match Girl Passion, commissioned by Carnegie Hall for Paul Hillier’s
vocal ensemble Theater of Voices – for which Lang was awarded the 2008 Pulitzer Prize in Music; Writing
On Water for the London Sinfonietta, with visuals by filmmaker Peter Greenaway; The Difficulty of Crossing
a Field – a fully staged opera for the Kronos Quartet; Loud Love Songs, a concerto for the percussionist
Evelyn Glennie, and the oratorio Shelter, with co-composers Michael Gordon and Julia Wolfe, staged by
Ridge Theater with the Norwegian vocal ensemble Trio Mediaeval.
Crowd Out will be David’s third Sound Investment commission for BCMG. The ensemble premiered My Evil
Twin in 1992 and The Passing Measures in 1998. The first was for 14 performers, the second for 43
performers... “with David one always feels a gauntlet is being thrown down, and all one can do is pick it up”
says BCMG’s Artistic Director, Stephen Newbould.
The CD recording of The Passing Measures, recorded by BCMG, was named one of the best CDs of 2001
by The New Yorker magazine. His most recent CD is Death Speaks (on Cantaloupe).
David Lang is co-founder and co-artistic director of New York’s legendary music festival, Bang on a Can.
Simon Halsey
http://www.intermusica.co.uk/artists/conductor/simon-halsey/biography
Birmingham Contemporary Music Group (lead commissioner)
www.bcmg.org.uk
Berlin Philharmonic Education Department www.berlinerphilharmoniker.de/en/education/
Spitalfields Music
www.spitalfieldsmusic.org.uk/
The world premiere performances of Crowd Out, produced by BCMG, will take place at Millennium Point,
Birmingham on June 8, 2014, followed by performances produced by the Education Programme of the
Berliner Philharmoniker at the Piazzetta am Kulturforum Berlin on June 14 & 15, 2014, and in London
produced by Spitalfields Music as part of Spitalfields Music Summer Festival with partners THAMES and
LSO Discovery at Arnold Circus on June 21 2014.
BCMG, Berliner Philharmoniker and Spitalfields Music would like to acknowledge the generous support from
their venue partners Millennium Point, Piazzetta am Kulturforum and Friends of Arnold Circus and London
Borough of Tower Hamlets. We thank them for giving us the space to perform, their time and resources
and for their support during our ambitious creative journey.
Millennium Point is an internationally renowned centre for innovation, where science, technology and
design come to life. Home to The Giant Screen, Thinktank, Birmingham City University and Birmingham
Metropolitan College, it is a hive of activity enlivened by the student community. Millennium Point is an
independent charitable trust.
The iconic Arnold Circus and bandstand stands at the centre of the historic Boundary Estate in the London
Borough of Tower Hamlets. The UK’s first council estate was inaugurated in 1900 and replaced one of
Victorian London’s most infamous and squalid slums. In Spring 2004, a small group of local people formed
The Friends of Arnold Circus to restore and bring new life to the landmark (which had fallen into disrepair)
rescuing this unique part of the East End’s heritage and re-establishing it as a resource for all.