"There is no name yet for this kind of music," writes Los Angeles Times music critic Mark Swed about the Pulitzer Prize winning American composer David Lang, but audiences around the globe are hearing more and more of his work. Recent projects include The Little Match Girl Passion, commissioned by Carnegie Hall for Paul Hillier’s vocal ensemble Theater of Voices and for which Lang was awarded the 2008 Pulitzer Prize in Music; Writing On Water for the London Sinfonietta, with visuals by English 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,at the Next Wave Festival of the Brooklyn Academy of Music staged by Ridge Theater and featuring the Norwegian vocal ensemble Trio Mediaeval.
In addition to the Pulitzer, Lang's numerous honors and awards include the Rome Prize; the BMW Music-Theater Prize (Munich); and grants from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Lang is co-founder and co-artistic director of New York's legendary music festival, Bang on a Can. His work is recorded on the Sony Classical, Teldec, BMG, Point, Chandos, Argo/Decca, Caprice, CRI and Cantaloupe labels. His music is published by Red Poppy (ASCAP) and is distributed worldwide by G. Schirmer, Inc. His most recent film project was the composing and compiling of the music for (Untitled), the Fall 2009 film directed by Jonathan Parker and starring Adam Goldberg and Marley Shelton.