Tomorrow night, Friday, November 9, Laurie Anderson, ever the consummate storyteller, will present a lecture/reading called "Stories About Stories" at the Hudson Valley Community College in Troy, NY. The Albany Times Union recently spoke with her about the reading and her new project, Homeland, which she's been touring across the globe and is now in the studio recording for release on Nonesuch next year. In "Stories About Stories," she tells the Times Union, "I'll be giving away all of my trade secrets. No more mystique. That's it."
Tomorrow night, Friday, November 9, Laurie Anderson, ever the consummate storyteller, will present a lecture/reading called "Stories About Stories" at the Hudson Valley Community College in Troy, NY. The Albany Times Union recently spoke with her about the reading and her new project, Homeland, which she's been touring across the globe and is now in the studio recording for release on Nonesuch next year.
In "Stories About Stories," Laurie will be discussing her recent work as NASA's first artist-in-residence and, through the use of some of her drawings as visual aids, its tie-in to gardening, of all things. "I'll use that part of the presentation as way to talk about technology and nature," she reports to the Times Union. "I'll be giving away all of my trade secrets. No more mystique. That's it."
In talking with the paper about Homeland, Laurie explains why she chose to reverse her usual process for creating a new piece by touring it first, while it was still in the works, before setting it down in the studio:
I got some really good musicians to play this music out on tour. There were some set parts, but there was also a lot of freedom to kind of go off, and it was really satisfying to hear how people would play the music. Some musicians liked to stick more to the part; others would kind of go flying off in another direction in the middle of the show. And now I'm in the studio trying to figure out which way to go on these songs—kind of ripping them apart and putting them back together.
With Homeland, Laurie examines both the flagrant exploitation of fear in the political arena and the hyperkinetic speed of technology. Considering the latter, she's chosen to slow down the pace of the new piece. As she tells the Times Union, "The last thing that I want to do right now is some other clever multimedia show that has a bunch of machines going really fast."
For information on tickets to "Stories About Stories" at the Hudson Valley Community College, visit hvcc.edu.
To read the Times Union article, visit timesunion.com.
