Cal Performances Presents Friday, October 24, 2008, 8pm Saturday, October 25, 2008, 8pm Zellerbach Hall Laurie Anderson’s Homeland Laurien Anderson Laurien featuring Okkyung Lee, Peter Scherer, Skuli Sverrisson Commissioned in part by: The Barbican Centre, London; Cal Performances; Luminato Festival of Arts and Creativity, Toronto; Melbourne International Arts Festival; Society for the Performing Arts, Houston, Texas; University of Florida, Gainesville. Made possible, in part, by Patron Sponsor Joan Roebuck, in honor of Robert Cole. Cal Performances thanks The Long Now Foundation for its sponsorship of these performances. Cal Performances’ 2008–2009 season is sponsored by Wells Fargo Bank. CAL PERFORMANCES 13 Program About the Artists Homeland United States and Europe with a band, performing music from Life on a String. She has also presented many solo works, including Happiness, which pre- Production miered in 2001 and toured internationally through Original Lighting Design Aaron Copp spring 2003. Set Consultant Willie Williams Ms. Anderson has published six books. Production Manager/Lighting Supervisor Bill Berger Text from her solo performances appears in the Sound Marc Urselli book Extreme Exposure, edited by Jo Bonney. Company Manager Dan Mapp Ms. Anderson has also written the entry for New Software Design Jody Elff York for the Encyclopædia Britannica and in 2006, Travel Agency Tzell Travel, Jean Furukawa Edition 7L published Ms. Anderson’s book of dream drawings, entitled Night Life. Laurie Anderson’s visual work has been pre- Worldwide Tour Representation sented in major museums throughout the United Pomegranate Arts States and Europe. In 2003, the Musée Art Contemporain of Lyon in France produced a tour- www.pomegranatearts.com Kennefick Kevin [email protected] ing retrospective of her work, entitled The Record of Director Linda Brumbach Laurie Anderson is one of America’s most re- the Time: Sound in the Work of Laurie Anderson. This Associate Director Alisa E. Regas nowned—and daring—creative pioneers. Known retrospective included installation, audio, instru- Business Manager Kaleb Kilkenny primarily for her multimedia presentations, she has ments, video and art objects and spans Anderson’s Senior Tour Manager Jim Woodard cast herself in roles as varied as visual artist, com- career from the 1970s to her most current works. Administrative Assistant Amanda Shank poser, poet, photographer, filmmaker, electronics It continued to tour internationally from 2003 to whiz, vocalist and instrumentalist. 2005. As a visual artist, Ms. Anderson is represent- O Superman launched Ms. Anderson’s record- ed by the Sean Kelly Gallery in New York where For further information, contact ing career in 1980, rising to number two on the her exhibition, The Waters Reglitterized, opened in Canal Street Communications British pop charts and subsequently appearing on September 2005. www.laurieanderson.com Big Science, the first of her seven albums on the As a composer, Ms. Anderson has contributed [email protected] Warner Brothers label. Other record releases in- music to films by Wim Wenders and Jonathan clude Mister Heartbreak, United States Live, Strange Demme; dance pieces by Bill T. Jones, Trisha Special thanks to Michael Blachly, Rande Brown, Rob Burger, Robert Cole, Pat Dillet, Angels, Bright Red and the soundtrack to her fea- Brown and Molissa Fenley; and a score for Robert Kristy Edmunds, Shahzad Ismaily, Louise Jeffreys, Janice Price, Lou Reed, Tom Sarig, ture film, Home of the Brave. A deluxe box-set of LePage’s theater production, Far Side of the Moon. Clyde Wagner, Kerri Welsh, Ben Wittman and Georgiana Young. her Warner Brothers output, Talk Normal, was She has created pieces for National Public Radio, released in fall 2000 by Rhino/Warner Archives. the BBC and Expo ’92 in Seville. In 1997, she cu- In 2001, Ms. Anderson released her first record rated the two-week Meltdown Festival at Royal for Nonesuch Records, entitled Life on a String, Festival Hall in London. Her most recent orchestra Campus & Community Partnership Event which was followed by Live in New York, recorded work, Songs for Amelia Earhart, was premiered at at Town Hall in New York City in September 2001 Carnegie Hall in February 2000 by the American and released in May 2002. Composers Orchestra and later toured Europe Free Speech: New Media, Performance and Democracy: Ms. Anderson has toured the United States with the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra conducted A Conversation with Laurie Anderson and internationally numerous times with shows by Dennis Russell Davies. The piece will be includ- Saturday, October 25, 2–3:30 pm, Wheeler Auditorium ranging from simple spoken-word performances to ed for chamber orchestra as part of the Groningen This event is free and open to the public; no tickets required. elaborate multimedia events. Major works include Festival honoring Laurie Anderson in fall 2008. United States I–V (1983), Empty Places (1990), The Recognized worldwide as a groundbreak- Ken Goldberg of the Berkeley Center for New Media and multimedia artist Laurie Nerve Bible (1995) and Songs and Stories for Moby ing leader in the use of technology in the arts, Anderson exchange ideas about politics, technology and art, in conjunction with Dick, a multimedia stage performance based on Ms. Anderson collaborated with Interval Research Ms. Anderson’s performances of Homeland. the novel by Herman Melville. Songs and Stories for Corporation, a research and development labora- Moby Dick toured internationally throughout 1999 tory founded by Paul Allen and David Liddle, in Presented in association with the Art, Technology and Culture Colloquium at UC Berkeley. and 2000. In fall 2001, Ms. Anderson toured the the exploration of new creative tools, including 14 CAL PERFORMANCES CAL PERFORMANCES 15 About the Artists About the Artists the Talking Stick. She created the introduction New York State Council on the Arts for 10-piece Born in Reykjavik, Iceland, in 1966, Skuli sequence for the first segment of the PBS spe- ensemble at Roulette in New York, and the other Sverrisson (bass) lives in New York. Mr. Sverrisson cial Art 21, a series about art in the 21st century. commissioned by the Kitchen in New York for mostly works with relatives of improvised music Her awards include the 2001 Tenco Prize for four musicians and visuals by filmmaker Andrew both acoustic and electronic. He composes for his Songwriting in San Remo, Italy, and the 2001 Lampert. Ms. Lee holds dual bachelor’s degrees in group, Seria, and records with Ryuichi Sakamoto, Deutsche Schallplattenpreis for Life on a String, as film scoring and contemporary writing and pro- Blonde Redhead and David Sylvian. Recent works well as grants from the Guggenheim Foundation duction from Berklee College of Music, and a mas- include A Thousand Incidents Arise with Anthony and the National Endowment for the Arts. ter’s degree in contemporary improvisation from Burr, When We Were Blue with Jennifer Reeves In 2002, Ms. Anderson was appointed the the New England Conservatory of Music. and Ama with Jungchen Lahmo. Since 1999, first artist-in-residence of NASA, where she devel- Mr. Sverrisson has been an ongoing collabora- oped her solo performance, The End of the Moon, Peter Scherer (keyboards) is a composer and pro- tor with Laurie Anderson. He has received five which premiered in 2004 and toured internation- ducer with a multifaceted career, encompassing Icelandic Music Awards and was nominated for ally through 2006. Other recent projects include music for film and dance, producing, arranging the Nordic Music Prize in 2000. a commission to create a series of audio-visual and performing with other artists from across the installations and a high definition film, Hidden spectrum of contemporary music. Born in Zurich, Founded in 1998 by Linda Brumbach, Inside Mountains, for the World Expo 2005 in Switzerland, he studied piano and composition. Pomegranate Arts (producer) is an independent Aichi, Japan, and a series of programs for French After arriving in New York in the early 1980s, he production company dedicated to the develop- radio, called Rien dans les Poches (“Nothing in My connected with key figures of the New York down- ment of international contemporary performing Pockets”). Her score for Trisha Brown’s acclaimed town scene, including Kip Harahan, Bill Frisell, arts projects. Since its inception, Pomegranate O Composite premiered at the Opera Garnier in John Zorn and Marc Ribot. With Arto Lindsay, he Arts has conceived, produced or represented proj- Paris in December 2004. Ms. Anderson was also founded the Ambitious Lovers. In recent years, he ects by Philip Glass, Laurie Anderson, London’s part of the team that created the opening ceremony has written numerous soundtracks, such as Never Improbable, Sankai Juku, Dan Zanes and Goran for the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens. In 2007, Again, Forever and Another Road Home for Israeli Bregovic. Special projects include Dracula: The she received the prestigious Dorothy and Lillian filmmaker Danae Elon; Wim Wenders produced Music and Film with Philip Glass and the Kronos Gish Prize for her outstanding contribution to the Voodoo, Mounted by the Gods, directed by Alberto Quartet; the music theater work Shockheaded Peter; arts. Currently, she is working on a series of docu- Venzago; the Brazilian film Sobras em Obras, Brazilian vocalist Virginia Rodrigues; Drama Desk mented walks, a 2009 album release for Nonesuch about Geraldo de Barros and directed by Michel Award-winning Charlie Victor Romeo; Healing the Records, Homeland, and her accompanying 2008 Favre; and Aline by Swiss Indian filmmaker Kamal Divide: A Concert for Peace and Reconciliation, pre- touring performance. Ms. Anderson lives in New Musale. Mr. Scherer has worked with choreog- sented by Philip Glass and Richard Gere; and York City. rapher Amanda Miller and Frankfurt Ballet and Hal Willner’s Came So Far for Beauty: An Evening is currently working on his third collaboration of Leonard Cohen Songs. In addition to Laurie Okkyung Lee (cello), a native of Korea, has been with Montreal dance company O Vertigo.