Bang on a Can Marathon Festival's 21st Birthday Celebration Blurs Boundaries, Dusk Till Dawn
The singer and violinist Owen Pallett with the Bang on a Can All-Stars.
Musical calendar watchers love the seeming portent of anniversaries that end in a zero or a five. But in America, turning 21 is meaningful, too. It's an age that comes with a certain implied license to go a bit crazy, to take risks, maybe even to lose control for a while. Perhaps that explains what was by all accounts a first for the Bang on a Can Marathon, which began in the Winter Garden of the World Financial Center on Saturday night: a mosh pit.
The crowd attending the Bang on a Can Marathon, a 12-hour event that began on Saturday evening at the Winter Garden. The unlikely occurrence took place during a frenetic 4:15 a.m. performance on Sunday by Dan Deacon, a Baltimore rock musician known as an exuberant, crowd-pleasing one-man band. Maniacally bouncing young bodies crashed into one another with gleeful abandon. A few brave souls body-surfed atop outstretched hands.
Bang on a Can has long included performers from outside contemporary classical circles in its annual marathons, both to blur musical boundaries and to lure new audiences. If it has never seen a response like this one, well, no one else is quite like Mr. Deacon.
Musicians from around the world attested to the global reach of the Bang on a Can aesthetic. Crash Ensemble, from Ireland, played colorful works by Donnacha Dennehy, its founder, and Terry Riley, as well as an overlong exploration of altered intonation and hammering rhythms by Arnold Dreyblatt. Ensemble Nikel, a quartet from Tel Aviv, brought pieces by Chaya Czernowin, Sivan Cohen Elias and Ruben Seroussi, which, though filled with fascinating spurts and bursts, had little shape or momentum.
Mr. Deacon's geeky hedonism -- all 15 minutes' worth -- was a high point of the 12-hour event, which Bang on a Can produced in collaboration with the mostly pop-oriented River to River Festival and arts>World Financial Center. Two other performers from alternative-rock circles also attracted their own retinues. The most polarizing, to judge by comments afterward, was the guitarist Marnie Stern, who blissfully strummed raucous chords and tapped spidery solos over a piercing looped drone.
