RSS 2.0 FeedOctober 12, 2011, Cover Stories, Theatre
Art of memory and identity
American performance pioneer, Laurie Anderson, opened the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts’ Vanguard Series on Sunday evening with wit, soundscapes, and stories.
The wiry Laurie Anderson stalked onto the votive candle-filled stage of Helzberg Hall in typical hipstergarb: skinny tie, skinny jeans, untucked plain white button down, and canvas kicks. Her first sonic transformations came courtesy of her electric violin; through the processing, the pitch was shifted to cello range and the entire hall rang with layer upon layer of undulating waves. The Kauffman technical crew performed commendably. Though my seat was two rows from one of the massive speakers, the sound never became unbearably loud.
After this brief musical introduction, the meat of Anderson’s performance of “Transitory Life: A Retrospective of Songs, and Stories” were the stories. All told over gently shifting synthesized pads, the stories she wove were of humor, sadness, personal experience, and reflective prose-poetry. The weft was that of memory and the weave was self-identity. All curled in upon on the other, exposing Anderson as human tapestry far beyond that represented on her albums and in her writings.
Her voice lilted and caressed. The variety of topics she regaled was varied and all were deeply personal. These ranged from tales of trips to Italy, an Amish homestead, the North Pole, California, Utah, and Mexico to stories of her time making things up teaching Egyptian Art, working at McDonald’s, and time spent in a children’s hospital recovering(?) from a broken back to metaphysical mediations on the creation myth of memory and vocoder-shifted commentary on the current state of the world and the US in particular. She made the audience laugh and then frequently twisted our laughter back upon itself so that we were shamed. Rare was the unadulterated laugh. Just as she referenced earlier tropes in later stories, our universal relief was spun around by the cyclicality of it all.
It is difficult to separate the performance into sections as it works so well as a whole, but one line—out of the countless fantastic snippets—rang truest: “I am singing the songs, but I don’t know the words.” Anderson’s hour-and-a-half piece was a summation of this idea, if it can be condensed so banally; she is constantly being shaped by her experiences, her human experiences, living her life. Her performance was the collection of these experiences as profound, mundane, or transient as they may be.
REVIEW
Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts
Vanguard Series
Laurie Anderson
Transitory Life: A Retrospective of Songs, and Stories
Sunday, October 9, 2011
Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts, Helzberg Hall
1601 Broadway, Kansas City, MO
For more information visit http://www.kauffmancenter.org
Top Photo: Laurie Anderson
Editor-in-Chief; Traditional and New Classical Contributor
Lee Hartman holds degrees from the University of Missouri-Kansas City (D.M.A., M.M.) and the University of Delaware (B.M.). At the University of Delaware, he received a Dean's Scholar position enabling him to pursue an individually designed academic program combining music education and composition. At the University of Missouri-Kansas City he served for three years as the Assistant Director to Musica Nova, the conservatory's new music ensemble, while teaching a variety of composition classes.
In 2007 he was invited to both the Iceland Academy of the Arts in Reykjavík, Iceland and the Sichuan Conservatory in Chengdu, China to give lectures and master classes in composition. In the summer of 2009, Hartman served as an orchestra manager for the Aspen Contemporary Ensemble and Aspen Opera Theater Center for various performances. He serves on the National Executive Committee of the Society of Composers, Inc. as Submissions Coordinator. His primary composition instructors include James Mobberley, Chen Yi, Zhou Long, Paul Rudy, John Beall, and Jennifer Margaret Barker. He currently teaches music theory at the University of Central Missouri and general music classes at Park University having previously taught at UD (2007–08) and UMKC (2006–07).
His compositions can be found at http://www.leehartmanmusic.com
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