“Mounting a new choral piece for 1,000 singers is not for the faint of heart,” writes Michael Cooper in Thursday’s (8/11) New York Times. “That is one thing Lincoln Center has learned as it prepares to present the premiere of David Lang’s ‘the public domain’ around its fountain late Saturday afternoon at a free concert celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Mostly Mozart Festival…. Organizers had to recruit 1,000 singers, many of them amateurs.… Overseeing it all musically has been Simon Halsey … and a team of 25 conductors … ‘the public domain,’ explores … what people gain by coming together.… [Lang] crowdsourced the text by typing unfinished sentences into internet search engines … [settling] on a sentence that began, ‘One thing we all share is,’ which produced … intriguing endings … including … ‘love of music’ and ‘favorite sandwich.’ Jane Moss, the artistic director of Lincoln Center, said … ‘Being in such a fractious time, with so much polarization around the world, this project is astounding in its power to demonstrate how we can work together.’ ” Said Halsey, “My job is relatively easy from a conducting point of view: I’m a super traffic policeman.”
Posted August 12, 2016
Pictured: A rehearsal for David Lang’s “the public domain,” to be premiered on August 13 at Lincoln Center. Photo by Benjamin Norman / The New York Times
