In fourth grade at Evanston Lab School, Evan Ziporyn “really wanted to play the trumpet. That was what all the boys wanted to do. But my lungs weren’t strong enough, so I settled for the clarinet.”
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In high school his mentors introduced him to the music of Steve Reich, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Iannis Xenakis, and “tons of Ives.” He developed a strong interest in jazz, and sang in the Jewish People’s Choral Society, a Yiddish chorale founded by his grandmother. “I was in all sorts of bizarre combinations: a Dixieland-and-rock band, a jazz sextet, the school choir.” At home he performed classical piano trios with his sister on cello and his father on violin. He also started toying with composing.
In 1987 Ziporyn made a trip to New York to perform in a concert of experimental music organized by three of his friends from Yale. The 12-hour event–titled “Bang on a Can”–immediately earned the group renown, and by 1989 had grown into a full-fledged new-music festival. In 1990, eager to be “back where the action was”–that is, near his fellow Bangers–Ziporyn accepted a teaching job at MIT. Two years later he became one of the six Bang on a Can All-Stars, whose 30 concerts a year across the country feature brand-new compositions, including Ziporyn’s own technically tricky, folk-inflected ones.
