Transcripts

SPEAKER: Laurie Anderson has been at the forefront of musical experimentation in the US for more than 40 years. She brings her new show to the Fitzgerald Theater in Saint Paul this weekend. How new is it? Well, Euan Kerr reports, she'll probably decide what she's going to do only after she's seen the inside of the theater.

EUAN KERR: For Laurie Anderson, the world is all about making connections.

LAURIE ANDERSON: And it's funny. I mean, sometimes you can put things together that are really seemingly shouldn't be, but suddenly they illuminate each other. So I depend on that kind of almost chance juxtaposition sometimes.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

EUAN KERR: Laurie Anderson is coming to Minnesota to play her new work, which is called "The Language of the Future." Speaking on the phone from her office in New York, she says it's hard to define right now what that will mean until Saturday because it's a work in progress.

LAURIE ANDERSON: So I'm working on it as I go along and adding things and subtracting them. So I'm not sure which blend of these pieces I'll be using.

EUAN KERR: Anderson mentions she's been hearing a lot of animal stories recently, and that may well be a basis for the show. From anyone else, that might sound worryingly vague, but Laurie Anderson comes with an ironclad reputation for her ability to improvise and create on the spot. She's invented new instruments over the years and delights in new technology. For this tour, she's been building what she calls her rig.

LAURIE ANDERSON: It's a combination of keyboards and software and violin and vocal processors and foot pedals and some imagery as well. And it is almost like being able to improvise with those elements.

EUAN KERR: She begins asking questions about the Fitzgerald Theater, which she's never visited, looking for things to build into the show.

LAURIE ANDERSON: Tell me about the space. What is the vibe there, if you had to describe it?

EUAN KERR: It feels very Midwestern.

She likes the idea of an older theater and one named for F. Scott Fitzgerald. She enjoys his writing, and particularly his thoughts about dealing with opposites.

LAURIE ANDERSON: That's one of my favorite things he ever said, was try to imagine you're holding two opposites-- one in each hand, and they are equally two but totally opposite. You should try to hold on to both of those things at once without going crazy, and you'll be able to be a writer.

EUAN KERR: It's an idea. Laurie Anderson applies to making music, too.

LAURIE ANDERSON: I always keep that in mind, so I'm glad he's got a theater named after him.

EUAN KERR: Now, in her late 60s, Laurie Anderson trained as a sculptor, but launched a career as a performance artist in the 1960s. She's collaborated with many people during her career, including William Burroughs, Andy Kaufman, and Spalding Gray. She began dating Lou Reed in 1992 and was married to him from 2008 until his death in 2013. She believes there's a great interest in experimental music today. There's new technology and new ways of distribution. Also, with the collapse of the music industry, as it once was with its rigid ideas about what music should be, Anderson says it's allowing new freedom.

LAURIE ANDERSON: So suddenly, you don't have to stay within those boundaries, the commercial boundaries, and that's because no one buys music. So I think it frees people to make things that aren't necessarily at all commercial.

EUAN KERR: When Anderson last played in the Twin Cities four years ago, she told the audience the piece she was doing then, "Dirt Day," was all about the elections. When reminded of that, it got her thinking again about this weekend's performance.

LAURIE ANDERSON: Maybe I'll change my direction from animals to politics. We'll see what happens in the next few days as I'm pondering this thing.

EUAN KERR: What Laurie Anderson does promise is it will be something different. Covering the arts, I'm Euan Kerr, Minnesota Public Radio News.