Dispatches From the Bang on a Can Summer Festival 2024: Part 5

The Bang On A Can Summer Festival can be all over the map, stylistically.  But if there’s one thing that makes everything and everyone come together in this annual event, it is simply: curiosity.  Media Fellow Leona Oliveros explains.

Leona Oliveros started their professional career in traditional public schools, but their best work happens in institutions that make room for risk-taking and experimentation. Now, Leona currently works in an alternative high school pathway at Highline College, and as the host fellow for Classical King FM and the Seattle Opera.

Spirit of Curiosity by Laura Boyman

The Bang On A Can collective, which has championed new music since 1987, decamps every summer to MASS MoCA, the vast complex of former industrial buildings in North Adams, Massachusetts that now houses one of the country's largest contemporary art museums. Since 2002, Bang On A Can has hosted Fellowship programs for emerging composers and musicians  - a way of allowing a younger generation of creators and performers to essentially grow up together. This year, they have once again included a Fellowship program for aspiring music writers, and invited me and the radio host/music scholar/pianist Terrance McKnight to serve as the faculty.  

This week, we are reporting back from the Berkshires with a new batch of writing fellows. You’ll get their impressions of the concerts, rehearsals, and unusual concert settings they're experiencing. It all leads up to the big event this weekend -  Bang On A Can Summer Festival's LOUD Weekend at Mass MoCA -a "fully loaded eclectic super-mix of minimal, experimental and electronic music," (massmoca.org). Follow our writers, Elizabeth Derner, Jurgis Kubilius, Leona Oliveros, Maddy Briggs, and Stephanie Manning as they follow the musicians and composers who may be the next generation to change the sound of contemporary music.  -John Schaefer