David Lang - Shade (2023) Hi-Res

'shade' was a joint commission from the Storioni Trio in Holland and the New York City Ballet, for a piece for piano trio and string orchestra. I imagined the piano trio as a solid object in the foreground and imagined how a light on the object in front of us would pass its shadow onto the strings behind. Everything that happens in the orchestra is a detail that is projected upon them from out of the music that is first played by the piano trio. The piano trio initiates all the music, and the orchestra lives in its shade. The ballet was choreographed by Pontus Lidberg.

'wed' was originally part of a larger piece I wrote for the Kronos Quartet, in memory of a friend who died. My friend married her partner in her hospital bed, and although she was about to die, weddings are fundamentally optimistic, so I tried to write a piece that would oscillate between consonance and dissonance, that might create an equilibrium between tragedy and hope. Years later, the Adelaide Festival in Australia commissioned me to turn it into a piece for string orchestra.