BIOGRAPHY
Laurie Anderson
Laurie Anderson (composer, The Far Side of the Moon) 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 in 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. Anderson toured the United States and Europe with a three-person band and has presented many solo works, her most recent being Happiness, which premiered in 2001 and toured internationally through spring 2003. She has published six books, the most recent of which is Laurie Anderson by RoseLee Goldberg (Abrams, 2000), a retrospective of her visual work, which has been seen 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," encompassing installation, audio, video, and art objects and spanning Anderson's career from the 1970s to her most current works. It will continue to tour through 2005. As composer, Anderson has contributed music to films by Wim Wenders and Jonathan Demme and to dance pieces by Bill T. Jones, Trisha Brown, and Molissa Fenley. She has created pieces for NPR, the BBC, and Expo 92 in Seville. In 1997 she curated the two-week Meltdown Festival at Royal Festival Hall in London. Her orchestra work Songs for A.E. premiered at Carnegie Hall in February 2000, played by the American Composers Orchestra, conducted by Dennis Russell Davies. Recognized worldwide as a groundbreaking leader in the use of technology in the arts, Anderson collaborated with Interval Research Corporation, a research and development laboratory founded by Paul Allen and David Liddle, in the exploration of new creative tools, including the Talking Stick. She created the introduction sequence for the first segment of the PBS special Art 21, a series about art in the twenty-first century. Her awards include the 2001 Tenco Prize for Songwriting in San Remo, Italy, and the 2001 Deutsche Schallplatten prize for Life on a String. In 2002 Anderson was appointed the first artist-in-residence of NASA. Other current projects include a commission to create a series of audiovisual installations and a high-definition film for the World Expo 2005 in Japan and a series of programs for French radio. She premiered her new score O! at the Opera Garnier in Paris last month. She was also recently part of the team that created the opening ceremony for the Olympic Games in Athens. Her next project will involve a series of long walks. Anderson lives in New York City.