David Lang
Growing up in Los Angeles in the 1960s, David Lang had no history of music in
his family and no great mastery of any instrument, but was inspired one stormy
day at school when his class weren't able to go out to play at break time.
Instead, they were kept inside and shown a film of a Leonard Bernstein concert
at Carnegie Hall. The nine-year-old Lang immediately started borrowing
instruments, listening obsessively to Beethoven and Shostakovich records and
creating his own compositions. By the age of 13 he was studying under the UCLA
Head of Composition Henri Lazarof, before contin...
