Laurie Anderson and Lou Reed will curate Vivid LIVE, a two-week festival at Sydney Opera House celebrating the world’s best contemporary artists and cultural interpreters, from May 27 to June 11. The primary focus of the festival will be on exploration through improvisation and collaboration. “For me," says Anderson, "the point is to present a lot of things that you wouldn’t normally go to but gives people the chance to jump off their street."

Laurie Anderson unveiled her latest multimedia piece, Delusion, at the Vancouver Playhouse Theatre this week as part of the 2010 Cultural Olympiad. "Delusion ranks with Anderson’s best," says the Georgia Straight. It is, above all, "smart, funny, emotionally engaging, and flat-out beautiful—in short, everything you’d expect from an artist of Anderson’s stature and reputation."

Laurie Anderson's Delusion received its world premiere in Vancouver last night as part of the Cultural Olympiad. In an interview with the CBC, she jokingly refers to the piece as "a poor man's Avatar." She tells the Globe and Mail it's "a collection of stories about identity ... and ancestors and relatives and where you come from, where you’re going. Those small questions." The Vancouver Sun calls her "one of those rare artists who have moved from the avant-garde into the world of pop culture and celebrity while still retaining her creative and experimental edge."

Laurie Anderson is at MASS MoCA in North Adams, Massachusetts, this weekend as part of a weeklong residency to develop her new work, Delusion. On Saturday afternoon, she will speak about her creative process and discuss the piece, which will premiere on February 16 and run for a week at the Vancouver Playhouse as part of that city's Cultural Olympiad.

John Adams has been honored with the 2009 National Endowment for the Arts Opera Honors. "This award represents the greatest honor our nation bestows in opera, and recognizes individuals who have made extraordinary contributions to opera in the United States and have become cultural treasures of the nation," says the NEA. Adams's first opera, Nixon in China, will receive its Canadian premiere with the Vancouver Opera next March for the Cultural Olympiad 2010. Also included in the Olympic Games' arts celebration are performances by Kronos Quartet and by Laurie Anderson.

Laurie Anderson presented the award for Outstanding Achievement in Music Composition at the Cinema Eye Honors this past Sunday night. Last fall, while on tour with her new performance piece, Homeland, Laurie participated in the Art, Technology, and Culture Colloquium at the University of California, Berkeley. As part of the event, Laurie joined the series curator, Berkeley professor Ken Goldberg, for an hourlong discussion, the audio portion of which is now available online at the Berkeley Art Museum's site. The Museum says Homeland "includes songs and stories that create a poetic and political portrait of contemporary American culture."

Laurie Anderson is a featured artist in the Guggenheim Museum's current exhibit The Third Mind: American Artists Contemplate Asia, 1860–1989, which examines the influences of Asian culture on American artists. In addition to the inclusion of her work in the exhibit, the museum presents two live performances by Anderson, titled Transitory Life: Some Stories, in the Guggenheim's theater, tonight and tomorrow night.

Laurie Anderson performs Burning Leaves, a selection of songs and stories from her various solo shows, in Cleveland, Ohio, this Saturday. She is also a featured artist in the new Guggenheim Museum exhibit The Third Mind, on the influence of Asian among American artists. In the House. In the Fire. Stories 1972–2008, a collection of spoken stories and sounds associated with Laurie's performance work, is included in the exhibit, which runs through April 19. In conjunction with the exhibit, Laurie performs two live solo shows, titled Transitory Life: Some Stories, in the museum next month.

Laurie Anderson will lead a special concert tonight at the Brooklyn Academy of Music's Howard Gilman Opera House in Brooklyn, New York, to launch BAM's Next Stage Campaign. Curated by Laurie and titled Laurie & Friends, the show features a diverse group of artists—from the experimental rock of Dirty Projectors to the Latin sounds of jazz master Arturo O'Farrill—who share the common goal of making new and original art. BAM is looking to break ground this fall on an intimate black-box performance space behind the main Opera House.

The McGarrigle Christmas Hour brought more than a little holiday cheer and flair to Carnegie Hall's hallowed Stern Auditorium on Wednesday night. It was a family affair, with Kate and Anna McGarrigle, Kate's children Rufus and Martha Wainwright, their aunt Sloan Wainwright, and many other extended family members by marriage, birth, and longtime friendships, including Emmylou Harris, Laurie Anderson, Lou Reed, Justin Bond, and Jimmy Fallon. The New York Times writes: "Although the program still includes the kind of pristine, ancient-sounding French carols performed by the sisters that used to dominate the show, the younger city folk have added a new flavor."

With the holiday season bringing with it so many family traditions, one of the more welcome over the past few years has been The McGarrigle Christmas Hour, a concert at Carnegie Hall inspired by the repertoire of Kate and Anna McGarrigle's 2005 Nonesuch album of the same name. The album is a collection of traditional and contemporary holiday songs and a celebration of family and friends, featuring Emmylou Harris, Anna’s daughter Lilly Lanken, and Kate’s children Martha and Rufus Wainwright, all of whom will perform at tonight's show. Also included among the concert's special guests are Laurie Anderson, Lou Reed, Teddy Thompson, Linda Thompson, Jimmy Fallon, and Justin Bond.

Laurie Anderson's European tour of Homeland comes to a close this week in Italy this Wednesday, after two shows in Tel Aviv, Israel, last week with special guest Lou Reed. The Jerusalem Post calls Laurie's pieces "all-encompassing experiences" and Homeland in particular a "thought-provoking performance." The addition of Reed to the lineup "charmingly combined her artistic style with his rock," for "an exceptional show that ranged from the finest in performance art to a classic rock experience."