Laurie Anderson was busy at this year’s ADE. For those of you not familiar with the 69 year old queen of avant-garde, she had a couple of mainstream hits in the 80s, but her artistry goes beyond what catapulted her into popularity. She experiments with film, branches out into the fine arts, and invents instruments such as the talking stick, a six foot long baton-like midi controller. Anderson has worn the hat of a voice actor, been artist-in-residence for freaking NASA, and pretty much does whatever the heck she wants. She was the object of a teenage girl crush. I spent years fantasizing about jamming with her on works off of Big Science. Yes, she is also the widow of the late, great Lou Reed, but she is such a legend in her own right.
Needless to say, we were beyond ecstatic as we walked into the palatial Stadsschouwburg Theater to pick up our tickets and get in line with a slew of smartly dressed, middle aged Dutch fans. The theater, built in the late 1800s, was once home used to the National Ballet and Opera. Our anticipation of Laurie’s lecture and performance was overshadowed by the expectation of something going wrong. Scheduled to speak alongside Philip Glass earlier in the day, technical difficulties kept her from attending. We would be lying if we said we weren’t apprehensive, but we still took our seats with enthusiasm.
Laurie Anderson emerged on stage to thunderous applause with violin in hand, accompanied by cellist Rubin Kodheli. She also had a laptop and controller setup of some sort, but we were seated so far back we couldn’t make out what it was. “We are just sort of winging it tonight, which means no one will ever hear this again,” she exclaimed as they began to play.
The main theme of the evening’s lecture was politics and Laurie Anderson’s stories were politically charged, with it being so close to the U.S. election. She recalled a time when she ran for class president and wrote letters to JFK. These letters, penned in her childhood, evoked a mix of whimsy and nostalgia. There was a soothing yet jarring protest of Donald Trump. At one point, she was accompanied by a recording of a man reading with an incredibly familiar voice. Was this Lou Reed speaking from beyond the grave, we wondered? The stark seriousness of the lecture was interrupted when Laurie put a pillow speaker into her mouth and used it like a vocoder, which was one of the coolest things we’ve ever seen a performer do.
As a fan of her career that began before her music graced my eardrums for 20 years, experiencing Laurie Anderson was a truly moving experience. Her voice cooed just the same as ever, but lost were the electronic and dance vibes that wove through her earlier works. This was something more mature and elevated. It was chaotic, disgusting, haunting, discordant, and beautiful all at once. We were glad we saw her while she was still around. As Philip Glass put it, Laurie Anderson is “a wild, creative force, unlike anything we’ve ever seen.” Her music is not for everyone by far, but it’s worth a listen to stretch what you DO like for a while.
Incredible.
Rating: A+
Journalist/blogger since 2009 and music lover since 1980. Bex now travels the world and writes and takes photos of dance events, creates art in various media, sings quietly to her cat in the shower, and occasionally builds something that tends to involve a blowtorch. She can usually be seen hiding behind some sort of camera rig.
