The Bang on a Can Summer Music Festival has transformed MASS MoCA into a genre-bending musical utopia for innovative composers and performers for 24 of our 26 years. Over three weeks, every corner of our galleries and outdoor spaces will come alive with performances, workshops, and seminars focused on adventurous new music — culminating in LOUD Weekend, when renowned special guests, Bang on a Can faculty, and young players perform throughout MoCA’s campus in a series of playful and heady collisions of jazz, classical, rock, and beyond. Fueled by more than three decades of marathon concerts, Long Play Festival in Brooklyn and countless world tours and staged productions, Bang on a Can’s LOUD Weekend at MASS MoCA is a fully loaded, three-day, eclectic super-mix of creative, experimental, and unusual music.

LOUD Weekend 2025 includes:

• • • So Percussion anchors an ecstatic opening night performance of Steve Reich’s Drumming, one of the most important works in the minimalist canon, plus an opening set featuring the virtuosic and charismatic composer-flutist-vocalist Nathalie Joachim.
    • Ryuichi Sakamoto was arguably the best-known and most successful Japanese musician in the world. His film scores are renowned for their diversity and sensitivity and it is rare for a band to play this music live. Arranged by the Bang on a Can All-Stars’ multi-talented clarinetist-composer Ken Thomson, the band presents a tribute to Ryuichi Sakamoto’s 1996 album, including an incredible selection of Sakamoto’s greatest hits from films such as The Last Emperor, Wuthering Heights, The Sheltering Sky, Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence, and more.
    • Michael Gordon,/David Lang/ and Julia Wolfe’s collaboratively composed Shelter “evokes the power and threat of nature, the soaring frontier promise contained in the framing of a new house, the pure aesthetic beauty of blueprints, the sweet architecture of sound and the uneasy vulnerability that underlies even the safety of our sleep.” With libretto by Deborah Artman.
    • Percussion legend Steven Schick leads a performance of Facing the Automaton, Tamar-Muskal’s groundbreaking percussion concerto for solo percussion, kinetic sculpture (Daniel Rozin’s Wooden Mirror), and chamber ensemble.
    • Julia Wolfe’s ethereal and crunchy Forbidden Love –– all the things you aren’t supposed to do to string instruments –– performed by So Percussion, the ultimate can-do collective.
    • Experimental noise master duo Wolf Eyes joins forces with sound artist, turntablist, and DJ Maria Chavez for an other-worldly sonic experience.
    • Guest composer Jeffrey Brooks returns to LOUD Weekend, this time with a new work for two hurdy gurdies!
    • Jason Treuting, co-founder of So Percussion, is joined by a host of percussionists to perform his hypnotic suite Amid the Noise in Courtyard D.
    • Special guest composers Ted Hearne,Tamar Muskal, Gemma Peacocke, and Trevor Weston.
    • World Premiers by the 2025 summer festival composition fellows.
    • Performances by Vicky Chow, David Cossin, Arlen Hlusko, Nick Photinos, Todd Reynolds, Maya Stone, Ken Thomson, plus fellows from the 2025 Bang on a Can Summer Music Festival at MASS MoCA.

  Additional artists and details to be announced!

Make a Plan

• • All seating is general admission. All festival passes include museum admission.
  • LOUD Weekend programming is fluid and subject to change. Final schedules with location will be available closer to the performance dates. Events are limited capacity and first-come, first-served for Advance ticket holders/tickets do not guarantee admission to gallery or B-10 concerts.
  • Preferred tickets include reserved seating for Hunter Center main stage events, an invitation to an opening night post-performance party, and Breakfast with the Founders & Artists on Saturday morning.
  • All events at MASS MoCA are accessible to all audiences. Please contact boxoffice@massmoca.org if you would like to inquire about accessibility needs and services.
  • By purchasing a ticket to join MASS MoCA’s visitors, staff, and artists on the museum campus, you agree to follow a Courtesy Code, detailed here.
  • Performers subject to change.
  • All sales are final; no refunds or exchanges.