The All Nighter Music and Arts Festival
From 8 p.m. Friday to 8 a.m. the next morning, the All Nighter Music and Arts Festival will keep students awake in Pauli Murray College’s Lighten Theater. The event is co-organized by Michael Gancz ’21 and Parker Redcross ’21.
The festival is a continuation of the “Live @ Murray Music Festival,” a four-hour show featuring 16 musical acts, which Gancz organized for the first time last year. This year’s festival will run for 12 hours, featuring works from over 40 student musicians, artists, performers and filmmakers. Blankets, cookies and hot chocolate will be provided free of charge.
According to Gancz, the festival aims to offer individual musicians and composers an opportunity to perform outside of established music groups. The event enables students to share their talents regardless of genre or style. Gancz was encouraged to organize a second iteration of the festival by the enthusiasm of last year’s audience.
“[The festival] seems to resonate with the community and fill in a niche that wasn’t there before,” Gancz said, adding that the festival offers an immersive artistic experience where attendees can “lose track of time.” Gancz is planning to offer prizes to audience members who lose track of time and stay for the full duration of the show.
Gancz said that he strived to schedule as much variety as possible from act to act. In the program, he interspersed energetic pieces with lyrical pieces and more experimental works.
Kincaid MacDonald ’22 will perform in a piece he composed for piano, cello and accordion titled “The Wolf at the Door.” The piece is inspired by a 19th-century poem of the same name by Charlotte Perkins Gilman.
Janet Hsu ’22 will perform the violin piece Partita No. 2 in D minor by Bach and “Tzigane” by Ravel. Hsu explained that the Bach is one of the most difficult and important pieces in the violin repertoire, while the Ravel has a playful character and includes improvisation.
The festival will also feature a short film written by Brittany Menjivar ’21 titled “Fragile.com.” The film was produced through the AT&T Hello Lab, a mentorship program headed by Lena Waithe, a screenwriter, producer and actress. Menjivar’s short film depicts a teenage girl’s experience working for a website that pays women to livestream themselves crying and explores her relationship with the manipulative man who runs the website.
“I’m really grateful that [Gancz] is putting together this event so that the various creators of Yale can come together and celebrate each other’s art,” Menjivar said.
Menjivar added that since staying up all night is usually an experience people only share with close friends, this festival provides a bonding opportunity for attendees and a chance for artists to find potential collaborators.
According to Martin Bresnick, a professor of composition and Coordinator of Yale School of Music’s Composition Department, the tradition of all-night music festivals at Yale dates back to the 1970s. In 1977, Bresnick, who was then teaching “Theory and Composition” in the Department of Music, started a music performing group called “Sheep’s Clothing.”
The group’s first all-night concert took place in 1978 and was broadcasted live by the Yale radio station. The all-night concerts always began with Frederic Rzewski’s “Le Mouton de Panurge” at about 11 p.m. and ended at sunrise with Terry Riley’s “In C.”
“The concerts that lasted all night were our best-attended events by far,” Bresnick said.
The all-night concerts at Yale inspired the creation of “Bang on a Can” music marathon, directed by Michael Gordon MUS ’82, David Lang MUS ’83 and Julia Wolfe MUS ’86.
“There is something about this structure that is kind of specific to Yale’s culture and resonates with Yale’s history,” Gancz said.
Pauli Murray College is located at 130 Prospect Street.
Carrie Zhou | pinyi.zhou@yale.edu