Lou Reed News

As the hotly tipped event date draws closer, 'ABOVE GROUND' has revealed additional names of guests that will be joining Dave Navarro and Billy Morrison for this one-night-only event taking place Monday, April 16 at The Belasco Theater in downtown Los Angeles (see the artist list below).

The Board of Trustees of the Museum of Arts and Design (MAD) today announced the appointment of Christopher Scoates as the Museum's next Nanette L. Laitman Director. Currently serving as the Maxine and Stuart Frankel Director at the Cranbrook Academy of Art and Art Museum in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, Scoates will stay in that role through the end of the academic year. He will join MAD on July 1, 2018.

Pangea presents Hally McGehean (Broadway: Annie, Peter Pan) in Upping My Numbers, with book and lyrics by McGehean and music by Joe McGinty (Psychedelic Furs, Loser's Lounge).

Swedish provocateur Ängie has released her new single 'Here For My Habits', the latest track to be taken from her upcoming debut album Suicidal Since 1995, out on April 6ththrough Universal. 

This week the Talkhouse Podcast presents a conversation between post-punk legends, with Television's Richard Lloyd speaking with Talking Heads' Chris Franz recorded live at NYC's The Strand.

The Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia (COP) continues our Improvisionaries season presenting trailblazing composer and electric violist, Martha Mooke.  COP's fifth series program at the Kimmel Center, Mozart, Mooke, and Faure, will feature Mozart's brilliant Symphony No. 38 "Prague." This iconic work received its first performance in Prague during one of Mozart's most successful tours to the city. The "Prague" symphony will share the program with a new commission by Martha Mooke. Mooke's unique style crosses the classical, jazz, and rock genres with a compelling and singular musical voice. In addition to concert appearances worldwide, Mooke's work has been featured in recordings that often defy categorization, including David Bowie's Heathen CD.

St. Ann's Warehouse welcomes back the Donmar Warehouse to present the American screen premieres of their acclaimed, visceral all-female Shakespeare Trilogy-Julius Caesar, Henry IV, and The Tempest-directed by Phyllida Lloyd, May 31-June 3. In 2016, following a 13-week final repertory season, the plays were filmed in front of a live audience in London and edited for the screen to include separately shot, hand-held and GoPro footage breaking the formality of the traditional live camera "capture" of stage productions.

National Sawdust Tracks announced today the release of celebrated contemporary classical guitarist ?Gyan Riley?'s latest solo album, "?Sprig?."

Stephen Petronio Company will honor fashion visionary Patricia Field and lifelong patron of dance Sylvia Drulie Mazzola at the company's 2018 Benefit on March 21. The evening will feature the fourth season of Bloodlines, a five-year autobiographical project that not only honors the lineage of American postmodern dance, but also traces the influences and impulses that have shaped choreographer Stephen Petronio.

The Sublunar Society is releasing the single 'Showing My Face' by Sweden's ShapeShiftingAliens, preceded by a snazzy new video. This release follows on the trail of the band's self-titled album in late 2017.

Sex/Crime, written for The Glory, a Queer and alternative East End nightlife spot and performance mecca, and funded by Arts Council England, is a challenging new play that explores sex, violence, language, fear and queerness.

Carnegie Hall's The '60s: The Years that Changed America, a citywide festival from January 14-March 24, 2018, concludes this month with a vast array of events presented at Carnegie Hall and at more than 35 leading partner cultural institutions throughout New York City. This special exploration of the '60s invites audiences to explore this turbulent decade through the lens of arts and culture, including music's role as a meaningful vehicle to inspire social change.

St. Ann's Warehouse and Onassis Cultural Centre-Athens present the American Premiere of Nikos Karathanos' The Birds, a modern, feast-for-the-senses adaptation of Aristophanes' offbeat and poetic comedy.

St. Ann's Warehouse presents Baxter Theatre Centre's The Fall, a vital new production devised collaboratively by a group of University of Cape Town graduates, re-enacting their revolt against a fraught symbol looming over their campus: a statue of 19th century colonialist Cecil Rhodes.

The sixth production of Mosaic Theater Company's third season will be Paper Dolls, written by Philip Himberg (Producing Artistic Director of the Sundance Institute Theatre Program) and directed by Broadway veteran Mark Brokaw. This uplifting, entertaining, and thought-provoking play with songs illuminates the world of five gay male Filipino nurses in Tel Aviv who care for elderly Orthodox and Chasidic men six days a week-and headline a drag show on their day off!

Dave Navarro (Jane's Addiction) and Billy Morrison (Billy Idol) have joined forces with their musician friends and special guest performers to present 'ABOVE GROUND' on Monday, April 16 at The Belasco Theater in downtown Los Angeles. This immersive evening of art and music-beginning at 8pm-will celebrate the vinyl album as an art form, and at the same time raise awareness and funds for the treatment of mental health, with the profits being donated to MusiCares. Expect the musicians to perform two seminal albums in their entirety-first Kings Of The Wild Frontier by Adam And The Ants and then The Velvet Underground & Nico by Lou Reed and The Velvet Underground-with completely different stage sets and production for each album's performance. 

I owe an apology to some friends. I claimed recently that SCHOOL OF ROCK the movie written by Mike White was based on SCHOOL OF ROCK THE MUSICAL but it's really the other way 'round. I'm that much of a (misinformed) theatre snob. Not so misinformed usually, but I admit Andrew Lloyd Webber isn't generally one of my favorite composers, despite my love of EVITA and JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR. That's why I was all the more surprised that SCHOOL OF ROCK, as it turns out, isn't all that Webber-esque. I didn't know this was a movie starring Jack Black, and I didn't know Webber quietly bought the rights for it, hoping to make it into a musical some day. Webber takes the original concept, with lyrics by Glenn Slater and book by Julian Fellowes (yes, the Downton Abbey Julian Fellowes) and voila! Somehow with a little help from Lou Reed, Stevie Nicks and Mike White, and a few others, the whole thing comes together quite nicely. I'll leave you to imagine what these guys do to a story that was directed by Richard Linklater for film. But, suffice it to say, this is Andrew Lloyd Webber, but it's not your mother's Andrew Lloyd Webber.

Rock/Americana Album From Sherman Ewing Draws Comparisons to Van Morrison, R.E.M., John Prine and Others

Arena Stage Artistic Director Molly Smith and Executive Director Edgar Dobie are pleased to announce that Broadway legend Maurice Hines will serve as the Master of Ceremonies and international touring artist and global humanitarian Mary McBride will headline the 2018 Arena Stage Gala honoring Mayor Muriel Bowser on Thursday, May 10, 2018 at the Mead Center for American Theater (1101 Sixth St., SW). As previously announced, the Gala features the presentation of the third annual Beth Newburger Schwartz Award to D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, and will recognize Jessica Stafford Davis as an Emerging Leader. The Gala is helmed by event chairs and Arena Stage Trustees Lavern Chatman and Maggie FitzPatrick.

BroadwayWorld has just learned that Oklahoma! is making its way back to New York. St. Ann's Warehouse and Eva Price will present a limited run of the Bard SummerScape production of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Oklahoma!, directed by Daniel Fish.