The San Francisco Chronicle has called Bang on a Can "the country's most important vehicle for contemporary music" but is has been a long road getting there. That road began in 1987 with a series of conversations among three friends, Michael Gordon, David Lang and Julia Wolfe, about where music was and where it was going.

Now in its 22nd year, Bang on a Can is dedicated to commissioning, performing, creating, presenting and recording contemporary music. Projects include festival concerts and the annual Ban on a Can Marathon in New York; a membership program to commission emerging composers; the Bang on a Can Summer Music Festival & Institute for young composers and performers; and cross-disciplinary collaborations and projects with DJs, visual artists, choreographers, filmmakers and more. The November 20 performance will be the group's fifth engagement at the Clarice Smith Center; previously, they have appeared with Meredith Monk (2003), Philip Glass (2004) and Don Byron (2006). Most recently, in March 2009, they presented a marathon of contemporary music including their performance of Brian Eno's Music for Airports in the Center's Grand Pavilion. For a more detailed bio, click here.

Julia Wolfe's music is muscular and kinetic and experienced through the body. She creates journeys like unfolding dramatic landscapes, a music meant to be entered into by the listener. Wolfe's work is distinguished by this intense focus on sound, the power of sound, the ways in which sound is related to memory and experience, the possibilities for new harmonies between familiar chords and microtonal tunings or sounds found in nature and the urban world. With a care and attention to detail that is both masterful and highly respectful, Wolfe's music celebrates the extraordinary qualities contained within something as specific as a gesture or an inflection. For a more detailed bio, click here.

Founded in Oslo in 1997, Trio Mediaeval (Anna Maria Friman, Linn Andrea Fuglseth and Torunn Ostrem Ossum) has developed three distinct strands of repertoire: polyphonic medieval music from England and France, contemporary works and Norwegian medieval ballads and songs. Trio Mediaeval has given concerts and radio broadcasts throughout Europe, in the USA and Canada. The trio has collaborated with many composers, including Gavin Bryars, Ivan Moody, Roger Marsh, Paul Robinson, Piers Hellawell and Isobel Davies (UK); William Brooks, Julia Wolfe, David Lang and Michael Gordon (USA); Thoma Simaku (Albania); Oleh Harkavyy (Ukraine); Gonzalo Macias (Mexico); Bjorn Kruse, Tord Gustavsen, Andrew Smith and Trygve Seim (Norway) and Sungji Hong (Korea). In November 2005 the Trio Mediaeval performed at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York together with the German musikFabrik in Shelter: a Contemporary Oratorio with projections, with music by Bang on a Can. The work had its European premier in Cologne and Essen in Germany early last year, and has since then been performed in Amsterdam, Antwerp and St. Pölten.