Arts: Genre busters

Get out your washboard and start clicking Snapple caps--the Bang on a Can All-Stars are coming to town. This sextet out of New York's Bang on a Can Festival plays new music with an undefinable flair: clarinet, saxophone, electric guitar, cello, bass, keyboards and percussion combine to form a sound somewhere between jazz, rock and classical--as one music critic put it, the All-Stars are New York's "premiere genre busters." Although the group's name sounds childish, their sound is not--the ensemble plays supremely difficult, fast-paced music, and comes from diverse musical backgrounds, from Juilliard to Baryshnikov's ballet. Their stop at Duke this weekend is part of their year-long tour spanning the Midwest, Europe and Lincoln Center before resting in residency for Bang on a Can's Summer Institute of Music at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art.

 The group came together after its six members, Evan Ziporyn, Lisa Moore, Mark Stewart, Wendy Sutter, David Cossin and Robert Black, had been performing year after year at the Bang on a Can Festival, a New York-based group devoted to new, sometimes experimental music. Performing operas accompanied by shadow puppetry, works on original instruments, a "comic book opera" and dragging furniture to create sounds, the Festival soon identified its most talented and dedicated musicians and invited them to band together under its name.

 Because the All-Stars stick to contemporary, innovative music, their audiences are typically more diverse than average classical music fans, and their reach a bit more broad. Listeners may feel confused, as the sounds are unpredictable and the genre nonexistent, but opportunities to hear new chamber music are far from common--especially with a strong beat. Love them or loathe them, the All-Stars, and the Bang on a Can Festival that lends them its name, fill a void.

 Bang on a Can All-Stars appear free as part of New Music Weekend, Nov. 7 at 4 p.m. in Baldwin, with music by Duke graduate student composers, and Nov. 8 and 8 p.m. in Reynolds Theater, $25 general admission, $12 students.