David Lang

Well, I don't really like contemporary because it sort of implies that tomorrow it will be history.

I really just like to think that I'm making music.

I've tried really hard to do different kinds of things so that I wouldn't feel that I'm stuck in one particular way of expressing myself.

I've done film and television.

I've done public works and collaborations with artists.

I try to keep it as fresh as possible so I don't feel like I'm working in one highly regulated old-fashioned part of the business.

I think you have an obligation as any kind of a musician to pay attention to both sides of the equation.

You know, you want to make the music and you want to make sure that people hear the music.

Both of those are part of your job.

And so what I've tried to do in my life is make sure that there's a larger audience for who can hear this kind of music.

One of the points was to expand who listens to the experimental music, which is being written now, and how we include more people than we exclude.

And there was another more collegial motivation.

Composers in certain times have been encouraged to be not nice to each other.

So there are only a few opportunities, it is thought, and you should be selfish and suspicious of everyone else.

I don't believe in that world.

Part of the Bang on a Can ethos has been to try to build a world which is as generous to as many people as it can imagine being.

David Lang will sometimes take this democratizing instinct to extremes.

I had a weird experience once.

I was in England.

I was staying at a friend's place in Islington in this section of London.