Their most recent record, “A Ballad for Many,” is a collaboration with experimental jazz clarinetist and composer Don Byron. Much of Bang on a Can’s appeal derives from their emphasis on the power of the live performance — they infamously have staged 12 hour “Marathon Concerts” and are a popular touring act. I recently spoke with clarinetist and composer Evan Ziporyn — who also runs a Boston-based Balinese gamelan orchestra and teaches at M.I.T — who simply refers to the ensemble as “Bang.” The following is the full, complete transcript.
Popcorn Youth: How did you get involved with Bang on a Can All-Stars?
Evan Ziporyn: Well, I’ve actually been involved with Bang on a Can longer than the All-Stars because I played on the first Bang on a Can marathon which was 20 years ago, and then we started the All-Stars five years later in 1992. at that time we were trying to kind of take the festival and find a way to bring it on the road, so we formed a band as sort of a house band.
Popcorn Youth: Bang on a Can is well known for the live performances, concerts and festivals. Was the original concept of Bang to cater to the live concert format or were you also thinking about recordings?
Evan Ziporyn: The original conception of Bang on a Can was to try to find ways for musicians who didn’t want to be defined as being in one genre or another — and we were really thinking of it in a live way, you know? In the early 90s and late 80s, I think we were more just trying to find a way to get our music out there. I mean, you gotta remember that when Bang on a Can started, CDs barely existed. It was before there were a lot of possibilities to put anything out on a smaller label, and it seemed like a big deal at that time to even put out an LP. So we weren’t really thinking in those terms, and now it’s 20 years later and we’re figuring out what’s the best method to encode for digital downloads and stuff like that. (Laughs) And that all seems so natural and easy now, but that change happened really fast. I still think that there’s something really unique about the concert experience. We think of recordings as kind of the legacy in a way, but there is something really powerful about live concerts, I think.
Popcorn Youth: Do you find that Bang on a Can is able to take advantage of digital sharing and the downloadable format and capitalize on that in a way you couldn’t before in terms of getting your name out there?
Evan Ziporyn: Oh yeah! I think it’s just easier to get your music out there now, and to find other people’s music now. And it just seems to keep getting easier. This is aside from all this nonsense about pirating music and all that, because that really has so little to do with what we do. But I just think that we realized, okay, we started the band in 1992 and we signed with Sony very soon thereafter, and that started about 6 or 7 years of just constantly feeling like we could not have a coherent conversation with our record company. And no matter whether it was Sony or then it was Nonesuch and then it was Point, which is a Universal at the time, and it was finally only around the year 2000 when we just said, you know, let’s just start our own label and do this ourselves! And, you know, it’s just been so much better since then. (Laughs) And the digital download thing just makes it even easier. But just the feeling of liberation that we got when we realized that we didn’t have to tell some executive or marketing people, you know, convince them that what we wanted to make musically was also what they wanted to release. It was just … it was a great feeling.
Popcorn Youth: Have phenomenons like YouTube or MySpace or iTunes changed the reception or atmosphere for new contemporary classical music?
Evan Ziporyn: I think it’s changed, but I’m not sure why it’s changed. It’s kind of a chicken or egg thing. I think the biggest change that we felt had to do with the whole electronica phenomenon. Again, back then, there were a lot of people and students and friends of mine interested in weird music but there was not really any context for it that you’d want to be in, you know? It was a stuffy concert hall with a lot of forbidding looking older men with, you know, wearing awkward looking clothes and stuff like that. (Laughs) I even remember when I started teaching a few years after that, students would come in just with the weirdest kinds of things, and I’d go, “Oh, really you like that?” And electronica I think just made a lot of people used to hearing a lot more unusual sounds and opening them up to the idea that there could be music beyond “the three-minute pop song.” Even if they were hearing it kind of through the cracks like through a rave or something like that back when there were raves, just this kind of began to get the idea that music could take yout o some very strange places. That happened I think is what sort of had people .. but it is true that I’ve been surprised, I mean I’m a relative newcomer to things like myspace but it seems like every day I get several adds from people or groups doing really interesting music that I never would have heard of or could have imagined that were out there — but it turns out that they’re everywhere.
Popcorn Youth: So do you feel like things like MySpace are creating new genres of music?
Evan Ziporyn: Well, I guess time will tell, you know? (Laughs) It’s hard to say what will come of all this, because so much of music making, as I was saying earlier, also has to do with the communal aspect of it. I’m not sure how well music sticks when you don’t have actually have the experience of playing with other people or in front of other people. I guess we’ll find out. What strikes me more is just the situation is a lot more fluid than we would have thought.
I think that there was a context in which people could gradually get used to a new way of thinking about music or a new way of doing music. And that kind of enabled them to explore things outside of those contexts. I guess that’s what it really is. But I think in general, a lot of people are looking to do things that they’re not finding in pop music or in older classical music. And they’re aware that it’s out there. And Bang we’re just like … we just keep going. We just started doing this music that we really believed in, and the whole goal was to finally work with each other and to work with interesting musicians across the spectrum and to find ways to keep it going. And that’s I guess what we’re going to keep doing — whether it’s in fashion or not. (Laughs)
Popcorn Youth: Where you see the different collaborations or cross pollinations ultimately leading? Is there some sort of final goal in mind or is it more open ended?
Evan Ziporyn: No, you know, because actually the goal has to do with keeping alive the ability to kind of speak to each other, basically. And to me, that’s a music goal, but it’s also a social goal, and also kind of a political goal, you know? Here’s the way I look at it: I think you can’t have a situation where all music is experimental. People need traditions of one sort or another not just to feel good, but because that’s how a language develops. And it doesn’t matter if it’s the language of, like, the Delta Blues or Viennese waltzes or grunge rock — in order for music to be powerful, it has to speak in a way that a certain group of people or community or culture or a certain time period understands.
But at the same time, if that happens, as soon as you get to a situation where music has to conform to a certain set of rules, and you can’t change, because if it does the church will ban it or the radio stations won’t play it on the radio, or any of those types of situations that’s where it begins to lose its power. It’s power as a communication tool, power as a magical force, or whatever. What it is, is that like there is something really unbelievable when two people connect, right? When I’m able to work with a Burmese drummer or a jazz clarinetist or a rock musician, and we’re able to find a way to do something together that allows us both to kind of express ourselves and reach beyond where we’re normally able to go. First of all, that’s where you get the possibility of changing things, changing music, changing yourself, and maybe even changing the people who are listening to it. And usually you don’t, right? Or if you do, you do it in a very small way.
But the whole idea is to keep the possibility that you’re going to reach some new place. That you are and the music is and the people that are listening are [reach that place]. And the reason that I think that’s political, frankly, is that we’re living in this situation now — and I’m standing on a soap box right now (laughs) — where everybody is trying to keep each other apart. You’re not supposed to go to certain parts of the world. There’s a big situation in which people are told not to speak to each other, they’re threatened, other cultures don’t understand each other, and I just feel like in the small ways that musicians can present arguments against that, arguments in favor of opening these lines – cultures talking to each other of diverse peoples and communities actually are able to speak together and work together and things like that, that’s what it’s all about.
Something never sat right when I was a music student. Music history goes from point A to point B to point C, and this is where we are now and this is the kind of music that we have to do. It doesn’t really work like that. In fact, it doesn’t progress like you know the advancement of technology or something like that. We’re using these much more sinuous and kind of lateral ways you know? And that’s what makes it interesting to me — getting to the point where you can’t say, “Music is going in this direction.” I would much rather say, “There’s all sorts of different kinds of music and they’re all moving in all sorts of different directions and I am enjoying the ways in which they intersect.”
Popcorn Youth: Specifically, looking at a brief list of people that you’ve worked with – people like Meredith Monk, Brian Eno, Thurston Moore, Terry Riley — they all seem very, very different, or maybe operate in different kinds of traditions. Specifically, what factors do you think about before you collaborate with someone? Do you already have something in mind before you start working with them?
Evan Ziporyn: That’s a great question. In terms of choosing who we want to work with, it’s kind of just like choosing from a list of our idols. (Laughs) I mean, of all ages. And sometimes I still get a thrill out of it, there are moments where I’m on an airplane and I’m going someplace to do a concert with Philip Glass and Terry Riley and I’m like, “Wow! I can’t believe I’m going to play a concert with Philip Glass and Terry Riley!” (Laughs) I mean, I don’t forget that these people either have been my heroes or are people that I heard. Even tonight ,in basically half an hour, I’m going to go do a rehearsal with Iva Bittova, and she’s someone who basically when I heard her for the first time, I basically thought, “Man, it would really be a dream come true to work with her at some point.” And the list for us of “dream come true” projects which range not just from the people you mention but also a Burmese drummer, which was a much wilder dream.
It’s more just about that kind of intuitive feeling of people really doing something that blows you away and really kind of fidning a way to get inside the music. Not so much for the thrill factor of fulfilling that goal, but for learning how they think, learning how they work, learning about the kind of music that they make. And as a result, when we go into it, it’s more just like finding a way to facilitate that. So with Meredith, that meant actually going into “Meredith basic training.” That meant really setting aside a big chunk of time and getting together with her and doing her vocal exercises and doing breathing with her and Tai Chi exercises and stuff like that — really just like going through that process and learning what it’s like to be with Meredith, you know? But with other people its more just like the traditional concept, where they come up with a project and we go, “Oh ok, that sounds good,” and then we play it.
Popcorn Youth: What was it like working with Iva Bittova?
Evan Ziporyn: Well, with Iva, that connection was very natural. She wrote a bunch of material, and she sent it to us and we began working on it. Soon, it became really clear to us that what she wrote was a lot of information that wasn’t in the score. And there was only so far that we could take it without her. And really, a lot of her presence is just in the really fine details of the way she performs the piece. So when she came here, it was really just a matter of kind of finding “the voice.” And you kind of know when you get there. And when you’re not there, you just kind of have to keep groping along and going “Okay, we’re not there yet,” with the music. But we’re obviously not really “playing” the music, and so in that sense it’s almost like working with a theatre director or a choreographer, where you’re trying to get to the essence of what they’re doing and go beyond what’s written on the page. But she’s an incredibly … it’s really rewarding to work with her. She’s a very sincere person. She lets you know when she’s happy and she lets you know when she’s not but there’s a sweetness and courtesy there, and it goes down pretty easy even when she’s not happy.
Popcorn Youth: So how will it be when you perform live with Iva?
Evan Ziporyn: What she performs with us, it’s all more or less material from the record but it’s developed into a set that has it’s trajectory of it’s own. It’s almost like a caberet set in a way, you know? And it’s more or less the same set that we’ve been doing with her, but there’s elements of improvisation in it like her own solos which vary pretty wildly from night to night. But there are also sections where one or the other of us has a lot of latitude. But she has a particular kind of emotional trajectory that she wants to take it on. And then the first half we do a smattering of other material, mostly having to do with these film projects that we’ve been doing.
Popcorn Youth: Are there artists in other media that influence how you think about music? Filmmakers, artists, writers…
Evan Ziporyn: Sure, yeah. Specifically to this show [at the State Theatre], I suppose it’s a little hard to say, but with one of the pieces, Michael Gordon’s piece, “Light is Calling,” it goes along with a film by a filmmaker Bill Morrison. He’s a person who I would say is influential, for me personally. There are other people on the list… There’s a movie by Lars von Trier called “The Five Obstructions” that I always show my students. I’m not a “Dancing in the Dark” fan, but I like this movie. In a way, I think somebody likes Lars von Trier is interesting because he’s somebody who was trying to get away from a way of making film that had become the norm, where you were just expected to do film in a certain kind of way, and he was looking for a way to get back to something really elemental in movies, with dogma. And so I think that’s been important.
Popcorn Youth: Teaching at MIT, is being at a academic environment or thinking about teaching and being around students, does that influence the way you think about Bang on a Can or think about composing music?
Evan Ziporyn: Oh yeah, being around students, sure. The MIT thing is a little bit unique, but one of the reasons I went to MIT was basically because it is not a traditional music conservatory. And I kind of felt like I would have less chance of being caught in certain academic traps if I were there. People would be a lot more open to taking things from not-so-traditional academic directors. And I felt very free and supported there, so I don’t regret that at all. But I think that in general, one of the things that I’ve noticed when I work with musicians who don’t work with students, is that you can get kind of jaded. And the great thing about working with students, is that they remind you why you were excited about music to begin with! Because when music is your profession, it’s just like any other profession, like [sigh] “Oh I gotta go to this reheaersal” and “I don’t want to go to this rehearsal” and so on. You know, there’s a danger of taking it for granted. And when you need to present it to 19 or 20 year olds then you remember what that sense of discovery is like. And that’s been really healthy for me, actually.
Popcorn Youth: So you live in the Boston area. How aware are you of separate local scenes that are going on in the Boston area?
Evan Ziporyn: I’m kind of aware of things that are going on [in Boston]. I try to see things and I have my own thing there with my gamelan orchestra which hooks me up with the world music scene there. But one of the things about being on the road as much as we are with Bang, is when you go are at home, you get less inclined to go out. (Laughs) So I don’t get to as many concerts as I used to and I kind of regret that.
Popcorn Youth: Traveling on the road a lot, is there a marked difference with how you’re received in the United States and how you’re received elsewhere — Europe, Asia, etc.?
Evan Ziporyn: No, I wouldn’t say that. I would say there can be a marked difference even town to town in the U.S. or in Europe [with how we’re received]. But there are certain places and they’re not necessarily the places you might not expect, and it’s hard to explain why that is. But sometimes you go to places and people are obviously ready for it and they’re tuned in and they get it; but then there are other places where it’s just … they have no idea who we are (laughs) or why they’re there and this can really vary. But the challenge is how you can respond to that and it’s really great when we go someplace like San Francisco and we get a really huge house and people are really into it and they know us already and they know they already like it … but that’s kind of easier.
Popcorn Youth: Is that your ideal audience?
Evan Ziporyn: No, I don’t think I have an ideal audience. I think what I’m getting at is that there is also something really great about being in a situation where people don’t really know what they’re going to get, and you actually end up turning them around. And you know I wish that I knew what the formula was to do that, but I definitely think that has to do with the extent with which we are able to project our beliefs in the material. And also it has to do with how much we’ve been rehearsing. (Laughs) Being able to present it in the best possible way.
Popcorn Youth: Well as you pointed out earlier, it would be hard to characterize Bang on a Can as fitting into any specific genre. How have you felt out what your market is or who your audience is?
Evan Ziporyn: Well, I don’t really know because I don’t really worry about it that much to be perfectly honest, which is probably a commercially pretty stupid idea. (Laughs) That’s just kind of how it is. I still am looking for the nice 25 word description of what we do that would make people you’re sitting next to on an airplane understand what you do for a living, you know? That would be nice. But one thing my friend Mark Stewart, our guitarist, says in answer to that, is that we are “semi-popular music.” And when people ask him what that means, and he says, “Well, it’s for the people, but it doesn’t sell that well.” (Laughs) So that kind of says it all, I think.
We’re trying to speak in a musical vernacular. We’re not trying to create music in an ivory tower, we’re not trying to create music that doesn’t speak in the language that people speak, but we’re trying to do something with it a little more extensive that you might hear on a pop radio station. And it’s really as simple as that. We’re trying to bring all we know about the music that we know and love and trying to fashion a music that somehow thinks of itself as the “discourse.” Rather than one portion of it or another portion of it. And rather than guess who we’re trying to pitch it to, we’d rather just make these objects as well as we can and find a way to present them to the public, and that includes figuring out ways for people to come listen to it. And if they come droves that’s great. But even if they come in small numbers of people that really care about it, then that’s fine, too.
Popcorn Youth: And you use guitar and drums and plugged-in instruments and combine that with a chamber music setting, that really adds a lot of options.
Evan Ziporyn: Yeah, it does, but also because that’s how we’re thinking about music and that’s how it’s been our whole lives. When I was in high school, I used to get up at seven in the morning to go to jazz band rehearsals, then I played in a concert band, and then I played in our orchestra, and then after school I’d go to my friends garage and play in our prog-rock band. And it was all just part of a continuum of playing music. I was listening to Stravinsky and King Crimson and Bob Dylan and Balinese gamelan and I think, to me, it was more about realizing that there had to be something in common about all of these things because I was interested in all of them, and there had to be a way to bring out all of these common elements, you know?
Popcorn Youth: Do you see Bang on a Can fitting in the continuum of contemporary classical music or jazz or avant experimental music?
Evan Ziporyn: [Pauses] Ultimately, I think it’s in the Western Concert tradition. Because the Western Concert tradition has always been actually at it’s best, a kind of an open thing. Not to get too historical about it, but when Bach wrote a suite, if you look at the names of the movements, they would be names of dance styles from other parts of Europe, the jique and the sarabande and the alamande and it’s basically like a tour of his known world, you know? And when you go ta village in Ghana, everyone has names of dance forms named after the village down the road. I think there’s something that’s part of how you do music that you respond to the music around you and you try to incorporate that into your world.
Popcorn Youth: Regarding your own personal musical history, what was the impetus behind knowing and playing and learning Balinese gamelan music?
Evan Ziporyn: Basically I just heard Balinese gamelan at the right time — I was in the right place at the right time, I heard it at a time in my life when I was dissatisfied with the music that I was doing and learning. I was looking for something else, and it just was a really intuitive thing. Like, “I have to know about this music!” And it never occurred to me that — I mean it’s not like I hadn’t listened to exotic music before — but somehow when I heard Balinese music at that time, it was this feeling of, “This is really weird, this is really doing all sorts of things that I want my music to do,” and then it was this third thing, like, “If they can do it, then I can learn how to do it. I don’t have to just be a spectator, and I can actually find someone to teach me how to do this kind of music.”
And it turned out to be a lot more than I bargained for, it was a much bigger thing than I thought. I studied it for 10 years before I even dreamed of writing music for it or trying to do anything with it. It was more like I was really just trying to figure out how it worked and how it fit into that culture, and what it felt like to do it. It was more kind of like, okay, there’s a moment where if you’re going to be a whole person then you’re going to have to call yourself out on what you’re doing — I couldn’t just separate [studying gamelan] from my own music making. And so I just started doing it, and I was actually quite nervous about it and I had no idea that I’d still be doing it 15 years after that, still composing music for gamelan and other instruments. But it turned out that there was a lot in that, a lot of things to think about, and it was an avanue that ended up being very important to me. And still it is still very challenging ot me — frankly, it’s a lot easier to write a string quartet than to write a piece for a gamelan orchestra. (Laughs)
Popcorn Youth: With regards to the recording process, has the development of recording software and digital recording environments made a big impact on you?
Evan Ziporyn: It’s a huge deal. We’re much more in control on every level. And there’s no way I could do something like [my piece] “Shadowbang.” There’s no way I could have done that because we were dealing with very limited time and those were live recordings. It was only because it was in my own time with my own equipment doing a lot of editing and a lot of processing that I was able to do that. But I mean, just in general the way that that’s empowered us, we could do a lot more things in the house, we take a lot more control with how the records could sound and how they could be presented. It’s been great.
Popcorn Youth: Reflecting on your career in the past 20 years, where do you see your music going in the next 20 years?
Evan Ziporyn: Well I’m anxious to find out. I can’t really see that far ahead. I don’t really think about it in that way. I can think maybe a year or two ahead, but beyond that… (Laughs) I think I’m as anxious to find out as anybody. (Laughs)
Popcorn Youth: Is there anybody specifically that you’d really like to work with?
Evan Ziporyn: Right now I’m much more hoping to find younger musicians [to work with]. I think that’s it time for the next generation to step up, you know? I’m sure there dozens of people that I haven’t worked with that I would love to work with, but I can’t really see a way to do it. I’d love to work with Ali Farka Toure, but now there’s really no way for that to happen, you know? I’d love to see what Arvo Pärt could do for us. There’s innumerable people like that, but at this point I’m more thinking that it would be great to have someone come out of the woodwork and do things that surprise and challenge me in the same way that our music did to the generation before us 10 or 15 years ago.
To find out more about Bang on Can, visit their homepage here.
To find out more about Evan Ziporyn and his work with Gamelan Galak Tika, his Balinese gamelan orchestra, visit his homepage here.
Read the original article in the Ithaca Times here.