"This fall, the Next Wave Festival returns for its 29th season, presenting an array of contemporary performance, artist talks, storytelling, visual art, and film that showcases work by emerging artists and innovative modern masters."

BAM's 2011 'Next Wave Festival' encompasses a series of events taking place from September through December. The schedule includes John Malkovich in The Infernal Comedy: Confessions of a serial killer and Kronos Quartet's Awakening featuring the Brooklyn Youth Chorus. Single tickets to all of it went on sale to the general public this morning.

BAM Next Wave Festival 2010 (the annual music/dance/theater/opera series to run September 21--Decemeber 19) will include work & performances by Laurie Anderson (doing the NY premiere of her work Delusion), a song cycle from Stew and Heidi Rodewald (of Passing Strange fame), music by NOLA's Trombone Shorty, Mikel Rouse's multimedia-song project Gravity Radio, and A House in Bali, an opera by Bang on a Can All-Star's Evan Ziporyn featuring Balinese Gamelan Salukat and BoaC All-Stars.

Next Wave Festival subscription tickets for Friends of BAM (as well as subscribers to both the 2010 Spring Season and 2009 Next Wave Festival) are on sale Jun 7; subscription tickets for the general public are on sale Jun 14. Single tickets for Delusion and Vollmond are on sale Aug 30 (Aug 23 for Friends of BAM).

The 2009 Next Wave included musical works from DJ Spooky, So Percussion and The Dessner Brother and Deal sisters.

More info on the above-mentioned shows is below...

Continue reading "BAM announces 2010 Next Wave Festival (Stew, Trombone Shorty, Bang on a Can All-Stars and more)"

photos by Erez Avissar

Queen Mermaid Laurie Anderson (at Santos Party House)...

Mark your calendar for this year's Mermaid Parade, happening Saturday, June 19th at 2pm. Leading the proceedings will be "King Neptune" Lou Reed and "Queen Mermaid" Laurie Anderson. The parade's afterparty, featuring burlesque and music, is at the nearby NY Aquarium later that night. More details on the route and transportation are here.

Check out some pictures from the 2009 parade (which had Harvey Keitel and wife Daphna Kastner as the king and queen) and 2008's ball/afterparty

Laurie Anderson has a new album on the way.

Laurie Anderson's forthcoming Nonesuch release, Homeland, is due out on June 22. To count down the weeks till then, Nonesuch will release one short video clip featuring Anderson's male alter ego, Fenway Bergamot, every Tuesday now through release day. In today's inaugural clip, Bergamot revisits the early days of the 2008 financial crisis. BAM has announced that Anderson will give the NY premiere of her new work, Delusion, at the Next Wave Festival this fall. [Nonesuch]

Delusion will run at BAM's Harvey Theater Sep 21-25, Sep 28-30, Oct 1 & 2 at 7:30pm and Sep 26 & Oct 3 at 3pm. Tickets will be $20, 35, 45, 60. "Next Wave Festival subscription tickets for Friends of BAM (as well as subscribers to both the 2010 Spring Season and 2009 Next Wave Festival) are on sale Jun 7; subscription tickets for the general public are on sale Jun 14. Single tickets for Delusion and Vollmond are on sale Aug 30 (Aug 23 for Friends of BAM)."

The above-mentioned Nonesuch videos get posted here. There's also a remix contest for the song "Only an Expert" off that record, which runs through May 27th (the winner will get $1,000 and their song will be available on iTunes).

Looking way into the future, Laurie Anderson joins Lou Reed, Mike Patton, Marc Ribot, Dave Douglas, and Uri Caine to perform with John Zorn in "a series of mind-bending sonic compositions and no-holds-barred improvisations" at NYC Opera on Wednesday, March 30, 2011. Tickets...TBA?

Lou recently took part in the Anthology Film Archives benefit at Hiro, but never made it to the Codes Festival in Poland where he was scheduled to play with Laurie and John Zorn on May 15th (Laurie and John did go though). All three of them are next scheduled to appear together on July 2nd at the Montreal Jazz Festival.

The pictures above and those below are from an April 28th benefit show at Santos Party House with Laurie Anderson, Tony Conrad, Erik Friedlander and (not pictured) Text of Light. More pictures and videos (including one with Laurie talking about Delusion) are below...

Continue reading "Laurie Anderson & Lou Reed are king & queen of the 2010 Mermaid Parade, playing BAM & other shows & stuff "

photos by Stephanie Berger

BAM's 2009 Next Wave Festival is in the process of wrapping up (there are two dance shows - Mortal Engine (opens tonight) and The Good Dance-dakar/brooklyn - left). Past shows included So Percussion's Invisible City and The Long Count, Philip Glass's Kepler and the last music-based show, DJ Spooky's Terra Nova: Sinfonia Antarctica (with International Contemporary Ensemble), which happened December 2nd-5th. How was it? The pictures in this post are from that show. A few more of them, along with the Mortal Engine trailer, below...

Continue reading "DJ Spooky played BAM (pics), Mortal Engine starts tonight "

Tickets are now on sale for the fall BAM Next Wave shows. Those include The Long Count (Dessner brothers + Matthew Ritchie with guest vocalists Kim and Kelley Deal, Shara Worden and Matt Berninger) (tickets), So Percussion's Imaginary City, Terra Nova: Sinfonia Antarctica (with DJ Spooky and ICE) and Philip Glass's Kepler, a preview video for which is below...

Continue reading "BAM Next Wave (National-Breeders) tickets on sale "

by Andrew Frisicano

DOWNLOAD: Aaron Dessner - We Were Born (from the Long Count) (MP3)

The Long Count
Oct 28, 30 & 31 at 8pm

Bryce Dessner, Aaron Dessner, and Matthew Ritchie

In an inspired collision of creative worlds, three inexhaustibly original artists--brothers Bryce Dessner and Aaron Dessner of indie rock royalty The National and omnivorous visual art phenomenon Matthew Ritchie--combine talents to create a song-filled myth about the beginning of time. A feast of images, instrumentals, and songs thick with primordial mystery, The Long Count pairs Ritchie's protean forms with a twelve-piece orchestra and the Dessners' gothic mix of electric and orchestral sounds.

Guest vocalists Kim and Kelley Deal (The Breeders [who are at the Bowery August 18th & 19th]), Shara Worden (My Brightest Diamond), and Matt Berninger (The National) round out the line-up in this visionary collaboration between music and art.

The MP3 above is the first musical glimpse at the above-described (and previously mentioned) Long Count project. The heavy minimalist influence on the track makes the role of those guest vocalists even more curious. Single tickets for the Long Count, and all the BAM Next Wave concerts, go on sale September 8th. A video trailer for the show, which falls on and around Halloween, is below. More Brooklyn Halloween show options HERE.

Shara Worden has been keeping super busy and impressing Decemberists audiences across the country when she sings her part in the Hazards of Love production (and when she's doing Bob Dylan). Upcoming Decemberists dates include September 21st in Montclair, NJ.

Kim Deal, in addition to the above-mentioned BAM and Bowery shows, will be in NYC (and around the country) with the Pixies in November. The shows at Hammerstein Ballroom are now on sale.

The National recently played a set at All Points West in Jersey City.

Worden/National collaborator Sufjan Stevens premiered his show "The BQE" as part of BAM's Next Wave Festival in 2007. That show is being released as a DVD and going on tour, as is Sufjan himself.

Also below is a video from "a 20-minute animated and musical collaboration developed by Bryce Dessner and Matthew Ritchie" that premiered at the Kitchen in March (Sufjan Stevens played the harmonium), and trailers and music (!) for the other BAM Next Wave commissions including Imaginary City (the So Percussion show), Terra Nova (the DJ Spooky/ICE collaboration) and Meredith Monk's Songs of Ascension...

Continue reading "an MP3 from the upcoming National-Breeders-Worden show @ BAM, Long Count ticket info, Next Wave video previews"