Laurie Anderson and the Kronos Quartet to Perform LANDFALL 10/14 at Bass Concert Hall

After last year's unfortunate cancellation, Laurie Anderson returns to Texas Performing Arts in performance with the Kronos Quartet to perform their collaborative piece Landfall. This, their first-ever collaboration, features a new evening-length work that combines their distinct yet highly compatible musical styles. Composed by Laurie Anderson and co-commissioned by Texas Performing Arts, Landfall offers a riveting interplay between text and music.

Laurie Anderson is one of America's most renowned-and daring-creative pioneers. She is best known for her multimedia presentations and innovative use of technology. As writer, director, visual artist, and vocalist, she has created groundbreaking works that span the worlds of art, theater, and experimental music. Anderson's live shows range from simple spoken word to elaborate multimedia stage performances such as Songs and Stories for Moby Dick (1999). In 2003, Anderson was appointed the first artist-in-residence of NASA, which culminated in her 2004 touring solo performance The End of the Moon. Recent projects include a series of audio-visual installations and a high-definition film, Hidden Inside Mountains, created for the 2005 World Exposition in Aichi, Japan. In 2007, she received the prestigious Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize for her outstanding contribution to the arts. In 2008, she completed a two-year worldwide tour of her performance piece Homeland, which was released as an album on Nonesuch Records in June 2010. Anderson's solo performance Delusion debuted at the Vancouver Cultural Olympiad in February 2010 and toured internationally throughout 2011.

For 40 years, San Francisco's Kronos Quartet-David Harrington and John Sherba (violins), Hank Dutt (viola), and Jeffrey Zeigler (cello)-has pursued a singular artistic vision, combining a spirit of fearless exploration with a commitment to expanding the range and context of the string quartet. In the process, the Grammy-winning Kronos has become one of the most celebrated and influential ensembles of our time, performing thousands of concerts worldwide, releasing more than 45 recordings of extraordinary breadth, and commissioning more than 750 new works and arrangements for string quartet. In 2011, Kronos became the only recipient of both the Polar Music Prize and the Avery Fisher Prize, two of the most prestigious awards given to musicians. Integral to Kronos' work is a series of long-running, in-depth collaborations with many of the world's foremost composers, including Americans Terry Riley, Philip Glass, and Steve Reich; Azerbaijan's Franghiz Ali-Zadeh; Poland's Henryk Górecki; and Argentina's Osvaldo Golijov. Additional collaborators from around the world have included Chinese pipa virtuoso Wu Man; the legendary Bollywood "playback singer" Asha Bhosle; Inuit throat singer Tanya Tagaq; Mexican rockers Café Tacvba; famed Azeri vocalist Alim Qasimov; and iconic American singer-songwriter Tom Waits.

In addition to $10 tickets for primary, secondary, or college students, Texas Performing Arts is now offering a limited number of $12 tickets to active and retired military personnel for all 2014-2015 season performances (excludes Broadway and special engagements). For a schedule of upcoming 2014-2015 season performances, visit www.TexasPerformingArts.org.

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

CAMPUS & COMMUNITUTY ENGAGEMENT EVENTS:

PRE-PERFORMANCE LECTURE
Margo Sawyer, Professor, Department of Art and Art History
Tuesday, October 14, 2014 | 7:00 pm | Bass Concert Hall Lobby
Margo Sawyer, Professor, Department of Art and Art History, creates installations that translate the notion of an ancient sacred space into a contemporary vocabulary.

POST-PERFORMANCE TALKBACK
Immediately following performance
Bass Concert Hall

For more information on this performance, visit http://texasperformingarts.org/season/laurie-anderson-kronos-quartet-landfall-austin-2014.

Photo Credit: Tim Knox