Asphalt Orchestra is a radical street band that brings ambitious processional music to the mobile masses. Created by the founders of the inventive new-music presenter Bang on a Can, Asphalt Orchestra unmoors innovative music from concert halls, rock clubs, and jazz basements, and takes it to the streets and beyond. The band brings together some of the most exciting rock, jazz, and classical players in New York City, who The New York Times has called “top-notch brass and percussion players … an iconoclastic marching band.” Asphalt Orchestra was also featured on the cover of The Philadelphia Inquirer as “not your mother’s marching band.”
The ensemble’s debut performances stretched 10 packed nights at Lincoln Center’s Out of Doors Festival. Since then, they have performed across the US East Coast and Canada; and at London’s Barbican Centre; the TED Women conference in Washington, DC; New York City’s Alice Tully Hall and Metropolitan Museum of Art; and more. Their repertoire ranges from music by pop wizard Björk to jazz legend Charles Mingus, rock progressive Frank Zappa, Brazilian iconoclast songwriter Tom Zé, Zimbabwean provocateur Thomas Mapfumo, Swedish metal band Meshuggah, and new pieces written for the band by David Byrne and Annie Clark (St. Vincent), Yoko Ono, Tatsuya Yoshida (Ruins), Goran Bregović, Tyondai Braxton (Battles), and Stew and Heidi Rodewald (Broadway and Spike Lee’s Passing Strange).
About Bang on a Can
Founded in 1987 by composers Michael Gordon, David Lang, and Julia Wolfe, Bang on a Can creates an international community dedicated to innovative music wherever it is found, and has grown from a one-day New York–based marathon concert to a multifaceted performing arts organization with a broad range of year-round international activities. In addition to its festivals LOUD Weekend at MASS MoCA and Long Play, current projects include live.bangonacan.org, a digital streaming platform launched during the pandemic with an ongoing schedule of live streamed concerts and world-premiere performances of new commissions; The People’s Commissioning Fund, a membership program to commission emerging composers; the Bang on a Can All-Stars, who tour to major festivals and concert venues around the world every year; the Bang on a Can Summer Music Festival at MASS MoCA, a professional development program for young composers and performers led by today’s pioneers of experimental music; Asphalt Orchestra, Bang on a Can’s extreme street band that offers mobile performances that recontextualize unusual music; Found Sound Nation, a new technology-based musical outreach program now partnering with the US State Department to create OneBeat, a revolutionary, post-political residency program that uses music to bridge the gulf between young American musicians and young musicians from developing countries; as well as recording projects and cross-disciplinary collaborations with DJs, visual artists, choreographers, filmmakers, and more. Each new program has evolved to answer specific challenges faced by today’s musicians, composers, and audiences in order to make innovative music widely accessible and wildly received. Bang on a Can recently launched its new digital archive, CanLand, an extensive collection of 33 years of music and associated ephemera—including recordings, videos, posters, program books, and more—that have been digitized and archived online. The archive is publicly accessible in its entirety at canland.org. Bang on a Can has created a large and vibrant international audience made up of people of all ages who are rediscovering the value of contemporary music. Learn more at bangonacan.org.
