As previously mentioned, Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson curated February at the Stone. Along with daily shows by many notables, every Sunday in February, including today (the Superbowl one), is an open house.

EVERY SUNDAY IN FEBRUARY--STONE OPEN HOUSE
Laurie Anderson and Anna Brenner invite you to Stone Open House.
FEEL FREE TO COME IN ANY TIME BETWEEN 3 AND 10PM
From the practical to the theoretical, SOH will be a place to hang out, drink great coffee, read, listen to unusual presentations and invent alternative ways to live and work. Part think tank, part party, SOH will host a series of presentations that cover a wide range of topics- from the history of boilers to teaching music to dogs. In cooperation with Housing Works Book store, SOH will present a library of must-read books for people interested in expanding in unpredictable ways.

Today looks like this:

2/6 Sunday (KM)
OPEN FROM 3PM TO 10PM
Scheduled Lectures:
4:00 PM--Eyvind Kang: Mood, Being, Acoustic Image (a workshop for bowed strings to which all are welcome, bowed string players should bring instruments!)
6:00 PM--Erik Ehn: Writing is breaking / Writing about genocide
8:00 PM--Roma Baran: Suddenly Jewish
Admission to the Open House is FREE. A TEN DOLLAR fee will be collected from those attending each lecture.

One recent addition to the schedule includes "Hal Willner and Philip Glass perform for Allen Ginsberg on 2/22 - Hal Willner (reading) Philip Glass (piano)." Lou and Laurie play with Buke and Gass on 2/15.

Observer: You've been with Lou Reed for what seems like forever. Any tips for staying together?

Laurie Anderson: Take a break from each other. We've been together for 19 years, married for two years. I think everything is about to blow away, and everyone is about to blow away, and it makes me care for them more.

Laurie Anderson and Lou Reed are no strangers to their friend and collaborator's non-profit, avant-garde, East Village club The Stone, and in February 2011 they will take their turn at being the curators. They will also play the venue right in the middle of that, on 2/15 with an opening set by Buke & Gass. Laurie also plays on 2/23 with Fred Frith. And the rest of the month isn't so bad either. John Zorn, Bill Laswell, Hal Wilner, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Eyvind Kang, Sean Lennon, Rob Burger, Marc Ribot, Rob Wasserman, and many others adorn the schedule so far (it is all listed below).

In related news, the dates that Lou/Laurie are curating The Stone overlap with a MoMA exhibit featuring Lou Reed's former manager in The Velvet Underground, Andy Warhol. The exhibition, entitled Andy Warhol: Motion Pictures, will show silent pictures that are professed to be his "most daring and experimental" film work. The show kicks off on December 19th and lasts until March 21, 2011.

And while we're on the subject of film, "And Everything Is Going Fine" is currently playing at the IFC Center. It's a tribute to Spaulding Gray directed by Steven Soderbergh. Laurie soundtracked the Spalding Gray films Swimming to Cambodia and Monster in a Box, and made a promotional appearance related to the movie this past weekend. .

The Stone schedule is below...

Continue reading "Lou Reed & Laurie Anderson curating The Stone in February, MoMA exhibiting Andy Warhol pictures"

photos by Rahav Segev, words by Andrew Frisicano

Laurie Anderson's Delusion, the first production in this year's BAM Next Wave Festival, is in effect the artist opening up her notebook to the audience. The 90-minute work recounts dreams, stories, parables, musings, jokes and melodies strung together with moody cinematic projections. Some of the stories we've heard before, like "Another Day in America," a song intoned as Laurie's male alter-ego, from her stellar LP Homeland was was released earlier this year. Others - an emotional story about the death of her mother, sharp one-liners and surreal scenarios about the afterlife - were fresh from the workshop.

Above all though, Laurie's sonorous voice, and her ability as a monologuist to travel to different places (the moon, Iceland, dreams), drove Delusion. The metronomic brilliance of the words and cadences would've been enough to propel a one-woman show in any downtown space. Here, they were supported by the projections and stage elements - one main screen in the center, with a smaller projector focused on a covered seat, and two smaller screens on either side.

Her supporting cast loomed beyond those side screens: violinist Eyvind Kang and horn & reed player Colin Stetson. Their silhouettes, namely that of Colin's unmistakeable bass saxophone, rocked steadily behind the backlit screens as they added layers to the evening's instrumental moments. The pair peaked up mainly during Delusion's chaotic interludes, when a red light washed over the stage, evoking the landscape of hell, with Anderson the Mephistophelean figure guiding the madness.

Clearly, Laurie was having a good time on stage, during the goodtime moments, with a permanent grin and a wink. The wink, as we found out, might be genetic; it also speaks to her style of communication: subtle, everyday gestures that unfold in countless ways. "Not a lot of people know this but..." one of her stories goes.

Delusion is at BAM Harvey Theater through October 3rd, every day except Monday. Tickets are on sale.

More pictures from the show are below...

Continue reading "Laurie Anderson's 'Delusion' continues @ BAM (pics & review)"

by Andrew Frisicano

Laurie w/ the dogs in Australia (more by Roberta W.B.)

Some in the audience howled with glee, others stood on trembling legs and a few drooled in delight as famed performance artist Laurie Anderson debuted her original "Music for Dogs" composition outside the Sydney Opera House on Saturday [June 5th].

Hundreds of dogs and their owners bounced around as Anderson entertained them with 20 minutes of thumping beats, whale calls, whistles and a few high-pitched electronic sounds imperceptible to human ears.

"Let's hear it from the medium dogs!" Anderson called out from the stage, as a few dogs yipped in return. "You can do better than that -- come on mediums! Whoo! WHOOOOOO!"

The concert was originally billed as a performance for dogs' ears only, and was going to be largely limited to electronic noises played at a frequency too high for human ears. But Anderson changed things up when she decided she wanted people to have some fun, too.

"We didn't want to do something that humans couldn't hear," she said. "We brought the octaves down into our hearing range so we could all have the experience." [AP]

Laurie Anderson, queen of this year's Mermaid Parade, performed her piece "Music for Dogs" at Sydney's Opera House on June 5th accompanied by Eyvind Kang, Skúli Sverrisson, and Colin Stetson. The event was part of the two-week Vivid Live Festival, which is being curated by Laurie and Lou Reed (king of this year's Mermaid Parade).

Laurie Anderson will be performing her new work Delusion this fall at BAM as part of the Next Wave Festival. That show will go on tour as well.

Before then, Laurie's new record, Homeland, comes out June 22nd on Nonesuch. It's streaming in full at NPR (up till the release date) - check it out. She'll play songs from that album on a very short tour this July. Stops include on-air sets at World Cafe Live and Late Show with David Letterman, and a Tuesday, July 13th show at (Le) Poisson Rouge. Tickets are on sale.

The album has some alright guests (including Laurie's male alter-ego Fenway Bergamot)...

On Homeland, Anderson is joined by a diversity of collaborators, from the Tuvan throat singers and igil players of Chirgilchin to New York experimental jazz and rock players including Rob Burger (keyboards), Omar Hakim (drums), Kieran Hebden of Four Tet (keyboards), Shahzad Ismaily (percussion) Eyvind Kang (viola), Peter Scherer (keyboards), Skuli Sverrisson (bass), Ben Witman (percussion and drums) and John Zorn (saxophone). Antony Hegarty contributes additional vocals.

Beyond those projects, "Anderson is also preparing a major retrospective of her visual work that will open in Sao Paolo in August 2010 and a book of her stories that will be published in 2011."

Videos from the "Music for Dogs" performance and tour dates are below...

Continue reading "new Laurie Anderson album stream + July tour dates "