Laurie Anderson Empty Places Brooklyn Academy of Music Playbook, 1989

Description: Laurie Anderson Empty Places Brooklyn Academy of Music New York Premiere Playbook -- In good condition; writing on front. ** Free shipping. From the NY Times 1989 review by By Stephen Holden: In Laurie Anderson's performance piece ''Empty Places,'' the song that goes the furthest in distilling its mood and summing up its themes is a witty new ballad called ''Hiawatha.' 'Borrowing its opening lines from Longfellow's poem, the song goes on to quote from Chuck Berry's ''Memphis'' and then to imagine mythical American couples, ''Geronimo and Little Nancy, Marilyn and John F.'' dancing. Punctuating the verses is an eerie cry of ''Yoo hoo!'' It is one of many leitmotifs in a work that, above all, evokes an American sense of loneliness, of cowboys calling through wide open spaces. Although the 90-minute work, which is the opening event of the Next Wave Festival of the Brooklyn Academy of Music, is staged somewhat differently from Ms. Anderson's epic ''United States,'' it is essentially a continuation of the earlier piece. Interweaving songs, film, slides, electronic music and anecdotes in an extended series of interconnected fragments, Ms. Anderson creates a loosely knit collage of images, sounds and phrases that collectively compile her latest vision of the American spirit. For ''Empty Spaces,'' the single large screen before which Ms. Anderson used to perform has been replaced by a series of screens on which images appear and vanish in a fluid stream. Used in conjunction, they also create what Ms. Anderson calls ''instant sets,'' such as the re-appearing interior of a recording studio. Since ''United States,'' Ms. Anderson has experimented by performing with other musicians on the stage. But in ''Empty Spaces,'' she has returned to a solo format, in which, alone with just a violin and a keyboard, she appears to conjure up the visuals and some of the music as if by magic. Although Ms. Anderson has said that ''Empty Spaces'' is more political than her past performance pieces, its politics are anything but doctrinaire. In the past she has always made her points by allusion and ironic juxtaposition, and here she is only somewhat more direct. In an amusing mock-academic lecture, she finds musical metaphors for the speaking styles of world leaders. Hitler's speeches were the sound of drums; Mussolini's, Italian arias, and Ronald Reagan's quieter speeches, variations on ''When You Wish Upon a Star. ''Entering the realm of sexual politics, she recalls attending a feminist demonstration at a Playboy club and having a conversation with one of the women who worked there that made her think twice about protesting. Reflecting on urban blight, she tells an uncharacteristically self-flagellating anecdote in which she finds it difficult to look at the human misery in a hospital emergency room. Whether talking (often through a device that lowers her voice), singing in a lilting folkish soprano, or playing a tape-bow violin that creates a rich spectrum of animal cries and subterranean growls, Ms. Anderson commands the stage with an easy grace. ''Empty Spaces,'' which includes more personal anecdotes than any previous Anderson work, is also her funniest work. Her cool, deadpan delivery of punchlines shows her to be a natural comic talent in the low-keyed manner of performers like Steven Wright. Musically, ''Empty Spaces'' continues the idiom that Ms. Anderson refined in ''United States,'' of a kind of minimalist electronic folk song. Fragment after fragment suggests space-age hoedown music, slowed-down until it sounds strangely doleful. Where ''Empty Spaces'' seems thin is in some of its imagery. In using Elvis Presley and John F. Kennedy as recurrent symbols, Ms. Anderson fails to glean any new slant or resonance. In the past, she has usually been more original. And her reliance on them suggests that a certain fatigue may have overtaken her in the search for fresh iconography. The time may have come for Ms. Anderson to take a break from imagining the United States.

Price: 10.99 USD

Location: Rochester, New York

End Time: 2023-11-10T18:02:09.000Z

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