Dispatches From the Bang on a Can Summer Festival 2024: Part 6
The Bang On A Can collective, which has championed new music since 1987, decamps every summer to MASS MoCA, the vast complex of former industrial buildings in North Adams, Massachusetts that now houses one of the country's largest contemporary art museums. Since 2002, Bang On A Can has hosted Fellowship programs for emerging composers and musicians - a way of allowing a younger generation of creators and performers to essentially grow up together. This year, they have once again included a Fellowship program for aspiring music writers, and invited me and the radio host/music scholar/pianist Terrance McKnight to serve as the faculty.
This week, we are reporting back from the Berkshires with a new batch of writing fellows. You’ll get their impressions of the concerts, rehearsals, and unusual concert settings they're experiencing. It all leads up to the big event this weekend - Bang On A Can Summer Festival's LOUD Weekend at Mass MoCA -a "fully loaded eclectic super-mix of minimal, experimental and electronic music," (massmoca.org). Follow our writers, Elizabeth Derner, Jurgis Kubilius, Leona Oliveros, Maddy Briggs, and Stephanie Manning as they follow the musicians and composers who may be the next generation to change the sound of contemporary music. -John Schaefer
Meet Bang on a Can’s off-stage star
By Elizabeth Derner
Far from the spotlights that shone on musicians during Bang on a Can’s LOUD Weekend, Andrew Cotton was performing too — but no one noticed. His instruments: a laptop and mixing board.
“Bizarrely, when there's a show happening, it’s like the audience isn’t there,” Cotton said. “It's just me and the band, and it's pretty hard to distract me.”
Cotton is a sound engineer. Near the end of each July, he flies from Ipswich, England, to North Adams, Massachusetts, to prepare for LOUD Weekend, the main event of Bang on a Can’s three-week contemporary music festival.
“It's quite a long commute to work,” Cotton said.
Cotton has been working with Bang on a Can for 28 years. He met them after working with their first percussionist, Steven Schick, at the BBC Promenade Series in London.
The Bang On A Can festival is held at MASS MoCA, a contemporary art museum. Audience members scattered around six spaces in the museum to see the LOUD Weekend concerts Aug. 1-3.
The biggest concert space was the Hunter Center, where Cotton used mixing technology in the back of the room to adjust the sound from the musicians on stage.
Large ensembles performed at the Hunter Center, including the festival’s musician Fellows and the Bang on a Can All-Stars with the Meredith Monk Vocal Ensemble.
For five days, his schedule was packed with soundchecks and concerts.
“When you get half an hour (off), you run upstairs to the catering, you chuck something in a box and then you get back at the desk to eat,” Cotton said. “You have to multitask.”
He said he doesn’t mind the long days, though, because he gets to hear cool music.
Sound engineering involves talking with the composers about how they envision their pieces sounding, and then constantly adjusting the volume and effects for each instrument while the musicians play.
“I love the job because you are part of the creative process,” Cotton said. “You are what the audience hears.”
His goal is to make his work transparent by balancing the sound without distorting the tone of any instruments.
“The sound should just be there and be its thing,” Cotton said. “People should come see the group play and not be aware of anything happening — that transparency is what's important.”
The large ensembles have several types of instruments on stage together. Some naturally drown out others, like a thundering drum kit next to a harp. But when Cotton amplifies each instrument the right way at the right times, the music sounds balanced.
Soundchecks provide a reference point for him. But when the empty room fills with people for a concert, the music sounds different.
“You're always tweaking,” Cotton said. “And people play differently, so you're always adjusting. You can never sit back and go, 'Eh.' You have to be working the whole time.”
When the All-Stars play, Cotton’s muscle memory kicks in — he instinctively knows how to adjust each member’s sound because he’s so familiar with how they play. Mixing for them is “pure enjoyment,” he said, though he equally enjoys the hard work involved in mixing for other ensembles.
Cotton has worked with sound for 34 years, seeing the evolution from analog tape to digital technology like multitrack playback.
His interest started when he mixed his school’s band concerts. He played trumpet but realized he was “better at the other end of the cables,” he said.
He went on to work with Elvis Costello, Carla Bley, Philip Glass, Steve Reich and many more artists, including Bang on a Can founders Michael Gordon, Julia Wolfe and David Lang.
While Cotton has worked across multiple genres, including pop, rock and jazz, he specializes in contemporary classical music. He likes the unconventional sounds new music offers.
“One of the reasons I enjoy doing new music so much is that you're constantly finding out new things,” Cotton said. “That's the joy of this festival particularly — you get surprised by things in a very nice way.”
His years on the job have given him an appreciation for the range of sounds out there.
“Sound is everywhere,” Cotton said. “Whether it's annoying elevator music or whatever, sound's a part of life. My work with a hearing-impaired percussionist (Scottish musician Evelyn Glennie) really taught me to listen to everything and how unpleasant silence is.”
During the festival’s last concert, All-Star clarinetist Ken Thomson introduced the band members to the audience. After naming the six musicians on stage, he pointed to the back of the room and thanked Cotton, the seventh All-Star.
Elizabeth Derner is a senior at the University of Missouri-Columbia studying journalism, English, and music. She enjoys playing double bass, writing articles and poetry, learning about new music, and spending time with cats.
