LAURIE ANDERSON AND KRONOS QUARTET PERFORM THEIR FIRST COLLABORATION, LANDFALL AT THE WEX

“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 Landfall

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

October 3, 2014—Columbus, OH— Composer, musician, and performance art pioneer Laurie Anderson and new music standard bearers Kronos Quartet unite at the Wex for one night only, Saturday, October 11 at 8 pm for Landfall, an original work composed by Anderson for Kronos—and one that is a highlight of the center’s 25th Anniversary Season, as well as a prime example of how the center’s earliest objectives and founding promise as a unique multidisciplinary arts center have been realized since its launch in 1989. It was then, at the center’s November 1989 dedication event that Anderson and Kronos first met backstage and Kronos’s David Harrington first suggested to Anderson that they should collaborate in the future. In Landfall, the Wex audience will witness how, 25 years later, that spark caught fire.

“For our 25th anniversary we are featuring several projects involving artists that have longstanding relationships with the Wexner Center, such as Laurie Anderson and Kronos Quartet,” says Charles Helm, director of performing arts. “Landfall marks the first time these innovative artists have collaborated together. It was beyond serendipitous to discover that they first met here during the center’s dedication event when they performed alongside others to forecast to Columbus and the Ohio State community what they might expect to see at the center in the coming years. It’s perfect that we can see the realization of that early promise 25 years later in Landfall, underscoring how the center has helped put the university and Columbus on the international culture map over the years.”

Landfall, Anderson recently told Helm is “a series of short stories about loss and disappearance, sort of inspired by Hurricane Sandy…(and) is also a work about trying to be free.” (The conversation between the two can be read in full on the Wexner Center blog, wexarts.org/blog.)

As a tightly interwoven work of poetic storytelling, multimedia spectacle, and compelling music, Landfall is a mesmerizing rumination on what is lost and found in life, even amid seemingly tragic moments of catastrophe. Laurie Anderson’s gift for storytelling, from wry observations about everyday events to conjuring dreams, draws the audience in as the Kronos Quartet create sonic atmospheres to amplify her narrative, aided by digital wizardry. Landfall’s celestial vistas in sound, text and visuals trigger reflections on life’s shared mysteries and the profound moments of wonder that lend us all our humanity.
 

Event page: /performing-arts/landfall

Laurie Anderson conversation with Charles Helm: /blog/laurie-anderson-landfall

25th Anniversary Season highlights: /content/fall-2014-preview

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

LAURIE ANDERSON

Laurie Anderson is one of today’s premier performance artists. Known primarily for her multimedia presentations she has cast herself in roles as varied as visual artist, composer, poet, photographer, filmmaker, electronics whiz, vocalist, and instrumentalist. “O Superman” launched Anderson’s recording career in 1980, rising to number two on the British pop charts and subsequently appearing on Big Science, the first of her seven albums on the Warner Brothers label. Other record releases include Mister Heartbreak, United States Live, Strange Angels, Bright Red, and the soundtrack to her feature film Home of the Brave. A deluxe box set of her Warner Brothers output, Talk Normal, was released in the fall of 2000 on Rhino/Warner Archives. In 2001, Anderson released her first record for Nonesuch Records, entitled Life on a String, which was followed by Live in New York, recorded at Town Hall in New York City in September 2001, and released in May 2002. Anderson has toured the United States and internationally numerous times with shows ranging from simple spoken word performances to elaborate multimedia events. Major works include United States I-V (1983), Empty Places (1990), The Nerve Bible (1995), and Songs and Stories for Moby Dick, a multimedia stage performance based on the novel by Herman Melville. Songs and Stories for Moby Dick toured internationally throughout 1999 and 2000.  Laurie Anderson’s visual work has been presented in major museums throughout the United States and Europe. In 2003, The Musée Art Contemporain of Lyon in France produced a touring retrospective of her work, entitled The Record of the Time: Sound in the Work of Laurie Anderson. This retrospective included installation, audio, instruments, video and art objects and spans Anderson’s career from the 1970's to her most current works. It continued to tour internationally from 2003 to 2005. As a visual artist, Anderson is represented by the Sean Kelly Gallery in New York where her exhibition, The Waters Reglitterized, opened in September 2005. As a composer, Anderson has contributed music to films by Wim Wenders and Jonathan Demme; dance pieces by Bill T. Jones, Trisha Brown, Molissa Fenley, and a score for Robert LePage’s theater production, Far Side of the Moon. Currently she is working on a series of documented walks, a new album for Nonesuch Records, Homeland, and an accompanying touring performance. Anderson lives in New York City.  

KRONOS QUARTET

For 40 years, the Kronos Quartet—David Harrington, John Sherba (violins), Hank Dutt (viola), and Sunny Yang (cello)—has pursued a singular artistic vision, combining a spirit of fearless exploration with a commitment to continually re-imagining the string quartet experience. In the process, Kronos has become one of the most celebrated and influential groups of our time, performing thousands of concerts worldwide, releasing more than 50 recordings of extraordinary breadth and creativity, collaborating with many of the world's most intriguing and accomplished composers and performers, and commissioning more than 800 works and arrangements for string quartet. In 2011, Kronos became the only recipients of both the Polar Music Prize and the Avery Fisher Prize, two of the most prestigious awards given to musicians. The group’s numerous awards also include a Grammy for Best Chamber Music Performance (2004) and "Musicians of the Year" (2003) from Musical America.

EVENT/SEASON SUPPORT

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.
Media contacts: Jennifer Wray, jwray@wexarts.org or 614-247-6241 or Erik Pepple, epepple@wexarts.org or 614-292-9840.