Landfall 

“She doesn’t just tell stories; she draws out every word with a kind of physical pleasure, tasting its flavor as she probes the everyday mysteries of life.…[in] a riveting, gorgeous new multimedia work …in collaboration with the equally venerable Kronos Quartet.”—Washington Post on Laurie Anderson’s Landfall

“No string quartet has ever been so popular or has had so wide an audience, globally and culturally.”—Los Angeles Times

A recent collaboration between composer, musician, and performance art pioneer Laurie Anderson and new music standard bearers Kronos Quartet, Landfall is not only a major highlight of our 25th Anniversary Season, but a prime example of how the Wexner Center’s earliest objectives, core values, and promise as a unique multidisciplinary art center have been realized since being launched in 1989.

A dazzling, deftly interwoven work of poetic storytelling, multimedia spectacle, and compelling music, Landfall is an imagistic rumination on what is lost and what is found in life, even amid seemingly tragic moments of catastrophe. Whether conjuring dreams or making wry observations about everyday events, Laurie Anderson’s gift for language will draw you in during the performance, while the members of Kronos Quartet, aided by digital wizardry, generate projected text through their playing to amplify her elliptical narrative. Together they’ll build towering, enveloping clouds of mesmerizing music. And from the celestial vistas they create through sound, language, and dreamlike ritualistic activity, Landfall taps into life’s shared mysteries and the profound moments of wonder that lend us all our humanity.

In many ways, Landfall is certifiable verification that from day one the Wexner Center was not only intended to put Columbus and Ohio State on the cultural map in unprecedented ways, but also to be a special place where unique projects and collaborations are born and nurtured. Laurie Anderson and Kronos Quartet first met backstage at the center’s dedication event in November 1989, where they performed alongside Philip Glass, Trisha Brown, and other notable talents, forecasting what Columbus audiences could expect in the years to come. And on that occasion 25 years ago, Kronos’s David Harrington first suggested to Laurie Anderson that they should join forces and work together. In Landfall you’ll see how, over time, this spark caught fire.

Landfall was commissioned by Adelaide Festival, Australia; Barbican, London; Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, University of Maryland, College Park; Peak Performances @ Montclair State University, New Jersey; Perth International Arts Festival, Australia; Stanford Live, Stanford University, California; and Texas Performing Arts, The University of Texas at Austin. Additional project support was provided to the Kronos Performing Arts Association by the National Endowment for the Arts.

This presentation of Landfall is supported by Mōd Advisors.

World premiere: February 1, 2013, Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center

Worldwide tour representation: Pomegranate