IN SHORT
“Long Play…is already the most important classical music festival in New York City.” —The New York Times
Join us as we present Gavin Bryars’ “gritty ambient” Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet at Bang on a Can’s Long Play Festival 2026!
MORE ABOUT THE PROGRAM
Bang on a Can presents the 5th year of Long Play, a three-day destination music festival, presented from Friday, May 1 through Sunday, May 3, 2026. Featuring 60+ concerts, Long Play also showcases a dense network of inventive music venues in Brooklyn – with performances at BRIC, BAM (Brooklyn Academy of Music), Brooklyn Music School, Roulette, Pioneer Works, Public Records, the Church of St Luke and St Matthew, ISSUE Project Room, Polonsky Shakespeare Center for Theatre for a New Audience, and Fort Greene Park – and more!
A limited number of 3-day Early Bird Festival and Supporter Passes are on sale now, including the Bang on a Can All-Stars playing a brand new arrangement of the iconic Philip Glass album Glassworks in its entirety and Julia Wolfe’s Pulitzer prize-winning Anthracite Fields with Trinity Choir, Steve Reich’s classic Sextet plus Electric Counterpoint performed live by 13 electric guitarists, the legendary Billy Hart Quartet, the esteemed and extraordinary Amina Claudine Myers, and the US premiere of Kali Malone’s Does Spring Hide Its Joy ft. Lucy Railton & Stephen O’Malley.
Some featured concerts in the 2026 lineup include John Luther Adams’ Crossing Open Ground for 40 percussion, winds, and brass in Fort Greene Park; There’s a Yearning (Eric Dolphy, Ornette Coleman and Oliver Nelson) including a premiere of recently discovered (and never before played) music by Eric Dolphy, performed by the Wildebeest Wind Quintet with Jeff Lederer and Mary LaRose; Stockhausen’s Kontakte performed by Steven Schick and Cory Smythe; BlankFor.ms with Jason Moran and Marcus Gilmore; Michael Gordon’s pulsating and unstoppable Trance with Ensemble Signal, a 100th birthday salute to Morton Feldman with Quatuor Bozzini performing String Quartet No. 1 and Charlotte Mundy performing Three Voices; Matthew Shipp’s The Cosmic Piano; Secret Chiefs 3 featuring Mr. Bungle’s Trey Spruance; Gavin Bryars’ gritty ambient Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet performed by Contemporaneous; David Longstreth (Dirty Projectors), and much more.