Dublin's Project arts centre and the Improvised Music Company are collaborating to bring the new music ensemble, Bang on a Can All-Stars, to Dublin on 23 May. One of America's leading contemporary music groups and arguably one of today's most exciting performance ensembles, the All-Stars' programme includes works by Conlon Nancarrow, Steve Reich and Tan Dun as well as music by artistic directors Julia Wolfe and Michael Gordon. The Dublin concert will also include the world premiere of Donnacha Dennehy's Streetwalker, a Bang on a Can commission.

Presented in association with the Irish Times's arts and events supplement, The Ticket and supported by Lyric FM, the Dublin concert is the last in a short series of international performances by the group, which commence in Toronto and take in St Petersburg, Moscow and Sofia. Bang on a Can All-Stars have been described by the New York Times as ‘a fiercely aggressive group, combining the power and punch of a rock band with the precision and clarity of a chamber ensemble' and as befits such a description will perform not in any of the traditional haunts for classical or new music in Dublin, but in Vicar Street, more usually the venue for jazz and rock concerts.

The group evolved from the Bang on a Can festival of new music initiated in New York in 1987 by three young American composers, Michael Gordon, David Lang and Julia Wolfe. The festival, which was first held in the East Village and later moved to the Lincoln Center, became known for its loose informality and lack of partisanship. The instrumentation of the Bang on a Can All-Stars is unusual: clarinets and saxophones, electric guitar, cello, bass, keyboards and percussion. Part classical ensemble, part rock band, part jazz band, it has a flexibility that represents the vision of the festival and aims to convey ‘the powers of concentration and attention to dynamic, timbre and pitch of a chamber player, the freedom through discipline of the jazz musician's code, and the unabashed musculature of a rock band'.