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Laurie Anderson

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Laurie Anderson
Laura Phillips Anderson (born June 5, 1947) is an American avant-garde artist, composer, musician and film director whose work spans performance art, pop music, and multimedia projects. Initially trained in violin and sculpting, Anderson pursued a variety of performance art projects in New York during the 1970s, focusing particularly on language, technology, and visual imagery. She became more widely known outside the art world when her single "O Superman" reached number two on the UK singles chart in 1981. She also starred in and directed the 1986 concert film Home of the Brave. Anderson is a pioneer in electronic music and has invented several devices that she has used in her recordings and performance art shows. In 1977, she created a tape-bow violin that uses recorded magnetic tape on the bow instead of horsehair and a magnetic tape head in the bridge. In the late 1990s, she collaborated with Interval Research to develop an instrument she called a "talking stick", a six-foot (1.8 m) long baton-like MIDI controller that can access and replicate sounds. Anderson met singer-songwriter Lou Reed in 1992, and was married to him from 2008 until his death in 2013.
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Born
1947-06-05
Birth Place
Glen Ellyn, Illinois, U.S.
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MuseumsHyperallergic

Laurie Anderson Hosts the Rubin Museum’s New Podcast AWAKEN

What is enlightenment? What does it mean to be awake? Are you awake?. Explore these questions and more in AWAKEN, the Rubin Museum of Art’s new podcast, hosted by acclaimed musician and performance artist Laurie Anderson. Inspired by the Rubin’s current exhibition, Awaken: a Tibetan Buddhist Journey Toward Enlightenment, the podcast features personal stories of transformation from a diversity of guests.
Picture for Laurie Anderson Hosts the Rubin Museum’s New Podcast AWAKEN
CelebritiesThe Guardian

‘We’re trying to sneak into people’s minds and hearts’: Laurie Anderson meets Róisín Murphy

“I’m going to show you my new gong – check it out!” Laurie Anderson is giving a new friend a tour of her flat on New York’s west side, jiggling through the corridors with her laptop. In a north London living room, Róisín Murphy is in her glasses, grinning, leaning into the screen. “I needed a gong to just bong, you know,” Anderson explains. “I really needed to beat a gong once in a while!”
Picture for ‘We’re trying to sneak into people’s minds and hearts’: Laurie Anderson meets Róisín Murphy
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Rolling Stone

See Laurie Anderson Perform ‘Big Science’ Songs for ‘Tiny Desk (Home) Concert’

Laurie Anderson performed a pair of songs off her trailblazing 1982 album Big Science for the latest installment of NPR’s Tiny Desk (Home) Concerts. For the 20-minute set from New York’s Canal Street Communications, Anderson delivered “Let x=x” and her classic “O, Superman,” with the musician accompanied on keyboards by Roma Baran, who performed on and co-produced Big Science.
Visual ArtThe Guardian

Laurie Anderson

The Flag Project: New York artists reimagine city banner – in pictures. A public art installation, entitled The Flag Project, at the Rockefeller Center in Manhattan is showcasing 193 flags designed by the public and a range of artists, including Hank Willis Thomas, Jeff Koons and Marina Abramović. Art Weekly...
New York City, NYt2conline.com

Laurie Anderson and Jason Moran Perform at the Park Avenue Armory Alongside Special Guests

Park Avenue Armory today announced dates for its premiere of Party in the Bardo, a collaboration between multidisciplinary artist and MacArthur “Genius” Jason Moran, who curates the Armory’s Artists Studio Series, and multi-Grammy Award–winning performance artist Laurie Anderson. For four performances from May 5 through May 9 , Anderson and Moran will perform in the Armory’s 55,000-square-foot Wade Thompson Drill Hall, underpinned by the soundscape of Lou Reed: Drones, a sonic installation utilizing guitars from Reed’s collection and curated by his former guitar technician Stewart Hurwood. Each performance, Anderson and Moran will invite special guests to add their own layer of artistry over the Drones, joining them in these improvisational sonic meditations for the city of New York.
Visual ArtNPR

Catching Up With Laurie Anderson, An Artist Always Ahead Of Her Time

Last October, in the midst of the pandemic, Laurie Anderson appeared at the Smithsonian's Hirshhorn Museum to recreate one of her earliest works. Wearing ice skates attached to frozen blocks of ice, she played her violin along with a tape recording stashed cleverly inside her instrument. When the ice melted, her performance ended. Bow over bridge, blades over ice: "Duets on Ice" is a meditation on balance and time.
Sciencefloodmagazine.com

Laurie Anderson, “Big Science” [reissue]

The strange angelicism of Laurie Anderson has been so much a part of the modern avant-garde pop firmament for so long that you almost forget her algebraic roots in true experimental music, tangled language poetics/semiotics, and performance art. This reviewer is just old enough (yet very young while witnessing it—don’t try to do the math) to recall her bedraggled spoken-word efforts for Giorno Poetry Systems, her time spent in the service of and in collaboration with William S. Burroughs, and her college classroom tours where she touted her self-made “tape-bow violin” utilizing magnetic tape on a violin’s bow instead of horsehair with a tape head in its bridge.
Scienceallaboutjazz.com

Laurie Anderson: Big Science

Sometimes a reissue is notable because of the extra material it carries and sometimes because it might unearth something previously unknown. And sometimes, as with the new vinyl reissue of Laurie Anderson's debut album Big Science, a new chance to talk about this masterpiece should be taken. Four decades ago, Laurie Anderson came down to us, mapped a blueprint for a sound and performance, and perfected it. Along the way, her pioneering mastery of digital technology allowed her to keep pushing artistic boundaries and her critique and observations served as a mirror of what America was and still is. Surprisingly, her records ever since have not become relics of bygone eras; with each new era it is easy to rediscover new meanings and sounds in different contexts. This makes her records sound fresh as they were never bound by genres but were propelled by stories.
MusicStereogum

Liz Phair Pays Tribute To Lou Reed & Laurie Anderson On New Song “Hey Lou”

In late 2019, on the day she released her memoir Horror Stories, rock legend Liz Phair shared a new single called “Good Side.” It was her first new song in five years and first non-holiday song in nine, and it marked her first collaboration in two decades with Brad Wood, the producer who worked on her run of classic ’90s albums. In an interview with Stereogum that day, Phair said “Good Side” was from Soberish, a new album coming in 2020. Last year didn’t go according to plan for anyone, and that includes Phair, who has not yet released the promised album. With the release of another new track today, however, Phair promises that Soberish will be out in 2021.
MusicHarvard Health

Laurie Anderson is, as always, undaunted

Avant-garde performer and recipient of this year’s Charles Eliot Norton Professorship in Poetry Laurie Anderson was undaunted by the task of designing her six Norton Lectures for a virtual audience. Anderson, who has produced film, music, multimedia, virtual reality installations, and photography, has utilized technology in her work for decades....
Musiciconvsicon.com

Liz Phair Releases Video For “Hey Lou” — An Ode To The Romance of Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson!

The legendary Liz Phair has released her first new song in two years — a genius ode to the romance of, well, geniuses (Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson specially) — entitled “Hey Lou.” Produced by longtime collaborator Brad Wood, who helmed production on 2019’s song “Good Side,” as well as Phair’s seminal albums Exile In Guyville and Whip-Smart, “Hey Lou” is everything that Liz Phair does best. It’s a song packed full of wry lyrical observations, a perfect, killer chorus, angular guitar lines that only Liz could write, and so much more.
MusicSpin

David Bowie Covers Laurie Anderson and Lou Reed on Latest Archival Release

The fourth show in David Bowie’s ongoing, comprehensive Brilliant Live Adventures will be Look At The Moon! (Live Phoenix Festival 97). The set features previously unreleased rarities, including a cover of Laurie Anderson’s “O Superman,” which the band played at their secret show as ‘The Tao Jones Index’ at the festival the previous day.
EntertainmentHarvard Health

Laurie Anderson to present Norton Lectures

Humcentr@fas.harvard.edu https://mahindrahumanities.fas.harvard.edu. The Charles Eliot Norton Professorship in Poetry presents Harvard’s preeminent lecture series in the arts and humanities called the Norton Lectures. These lectures recognize individuals of extraordinary talent who, in addition to their particular expertise, have the gift of wide dissemination and wise expression. The next Norton Lectures,...
Musicsidestagemagazine.com

Eddie Vedder, Phoebe Bridgers, Brittany Howard, Valerie June, Angélique Kidjo, Laurie Anderson + More to Join Philip Glass for Tibet House US Virtual Benefit Concert on 2/17

Eddie Vedder, Phoebe Bridgers, Brittany Howard, Valerie June, Angélique Kidjo, Laurie Anderson,. Tenzin Choegyal, Rubin Kodheli and many, many more!. One of the longest-running and most renowned live cultural events in New York City, The 34th Annual Tibet House US Benefit Concert will return this year for a special virtual edition combining live and pre-recorded segments streaming via Mandolin, the premiere concert livestream platform for artists, venues, and fans. For the first time ever, this year’s concert offers viewers around the world the unique opportunity to experience the warmth, sense of community and amazing music the evening has provided for so many years at Carnegie Hall. Joining esteemed composer and artistic director Philip Glass, who once again curated this year’s line-up, will be Eddie Vedder, Phoebe Bridgers, Brittany Howard, Valerie June, Angélique Kidjo, Laurie Anderson, Tenzin Choegyal, Rubin Kodheli and many, many more to be announced soon. We are also deeply honored to announce that the concert will begin with a personal video message from His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama.