LEWISBURG – According to a press release, the Weis Center for the Performing Arts at Bucknell University will welcome the Bang on a Can All Stars featuring the Bucknell Choir, under the direction of Professor Caleb Hopkins, at 2 p.m. on March 1.

They will perform David Lang’s “before and after nature” with music and text by Lang and video design by Tal Rosner.

There will be a pre-performance talk with Lang from 1:15-1:45 p.m. in the Weis Center atrium led by Professor Hopkins. This performance is part of the Weis Center’s year-long Trees Series.

“Since its first Marathon concert in 1987, Bang on a Can has been creating an international community dedicated to innovative music, wherever it is found,” said the press release. “With adventurous programs, it commissions new composers, performs, presents and records new work, develops new audiences and educates the musicians of the future.”

The ensemble will perform Lang’s “before and after nature,” which is based on “The End of Nature” by Bill McKibben and “After Nature” by Jedidiah Purdy. Both books discuss humanity’s relationship to nature.

About the piece

When Stanford University alumnus Lang set out to write a new composition for Bang on a Can All Stars, the electrifying music ensemble he co-founded, he looked to his alma mater for inspiration.

Commissioned by Stanford Live specifically to bring Lang and the BOAC All Stars back to its campus, “before and after nature” is a meditation on the natural world, both before human existence and after humans are gone.

Lang met closely with scholars, faculty, and students in Stanford’s Doerr School of Sustainability, and with the Doerr-affiliated Environmental Justice Working Group. He combined what he learned with his own readings from the past fifty years of environmental thinking, leading him to write his own texts that explore the different ways we define and understand nature.

“Lang set these texts for voices and Bang on a Can All Stars, and he enlisted video pioneer Tal Rosner to invent a way to visualize the meanings of the music in video and projection,” said the press release. “The result is an immersive spectacle of sound and vision, both heartbreaking and miraculous, full of beauty, wonder, and awe.”

Lang is a renowned Grammy Award and Pulitzer Prize-winning composer with an extensive body of work, including choral compositions and operas.

The Bang on a Can All Stars ensemble is recognized worldwide for ultra-dynamic live performances and recordings of today’s most innovative music. Freely crossing the boundaries between classical, jazz, rock, world, and experimental music, the six-member amplified group has consistently forged a distinct category-defying identity, taking music into uncharted territories.

Tickets can be reserved by calling 570-577-1000 or online at Bucknell.edu/BoxOffice. They are also available in person from several locations including the Weis Center lobby (weekdays 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.) and the CAP Center Box Office, located on the ground floor of the Elaine Langone Center (weekdays 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.).

For more information about this event, call 570-577-3727 or e-mail lisa.leighton@bucknell.edu.