Boss Hog, Man Forever, Dave Harrington Group, Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith Celebrate 50th Anniversary of Joshua Light Show

Following highly successful performances in 2012 and 2014, the Joshua Light Show returns to NYU Skirball to celebrate its 50th anniversary. The renowned multimedia artist Joshua White and his legendary team of collaborators create live visual masterpieces that move to the sounds of a remarkable roster of musical collaborators. Utilizing signature projection techniques, including lumia and its fabled "liquid light," the Joshua Light Show improvises an intense visual experience to complement and enhance the live music experience.

On September 8, joining Joshua Light Show for the first time is New York City's punk-blues provocateurs Boss Hog, lead by Downtown rock-royalty couple CrisTina Martinez and Jon Spencer. Alongside the Joshua Light Show's iconic imagery, the band affirms its status as one of the greats. Dave Harrington Group is an ever-evolving musical project anchored by guitarist Harrington's forays into experimental rock, progressive jazz, and ambient electronics.

Man Forever, a platform for the broad-ranging compositions of John Colpitts (Kid Millions, Oneida), celebrates the Joshua Light Show's 50th anniversary on September 9 with his diverse ensemble, featuring superstars from the worlds of avant-rock, jazz, and classical music, including up-and-coming percussion trio, Tigue. Taking inspiration from the early minimalism of composer Terry Riley and armed with a vintage Buchla modular synthesizer, Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith's music is overflowing with analog pulsations and braided melodic patterns.

The Joshua Light Show gained worldwide acclaim as resident artists at Bill Graham's Fillmore East during the late 1960's, and continued to amaze at Woodstock with the most celebrated musicians of the era. Today, Joshua Light Show performs across the United States and Europe with a new generation of music luminaries.

Light Show Artists include Joshua White, Seth Kirby, Alyson Denny, Curtis Godino, Brock Monroe, Chaz Lord, Gary Panter, Doug Pope, BrigEd Smith, George Stadnick, Jessica Scott, and music director Nick Hallet.

ABOUT Joshua Light Show

During the summer of 1967, San Francisco's Fillmore rock impresario Bill Graham hired artist Joshua White to create a Bay Area light show for a series of concerts in Toronto featuring the Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead. Because Graham needed to sell all of the theater's tickets, the lightshow could not occupy the balcony normally inhabited by a typical Bay Area lightshow. As a result of Graham's challenge, White designed a system where projections would be performed from the stage itself behind a giant rear projection screen. This experience led to the formation of the Joshua Light Show. Six months later, Graham Opened the Fillmore East in New York and hired the Joshua Light Show to be its resident artists. The venue welcomed performances by the Who, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Frank Zappa, the Grateful Dead and the Doors, among many other great musicians of the era. The lightshow provided visual support. During this time, Joshua Light Show created lighting effects for the legendary party sequence in the Academy Award winning film Midnight Cowboy and performed at Woodstock. Eventually, White left the light show to focus on video magnification for ever-increasing rock spectacles, which led to a career in television. In 2004, White teamed up with artist Gary Panter and regenerated his classic light show at Anthology Film Archives in New York. Over the next eight years, the show evolved with the participation of new collaborators. Recent performances include Barbican Hall, Mutek Mexico City, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, New World Center for Art Miami Basel, Lincoln Center, the American Museum of Natural History's Hayden Planetarium, and the Haus der Kulturen der Welt for the Transmediale Festival.

ABOUT THE MUSICAL ACTS

Boss Hog, New York City's punk-blues provocateurs, were formed in 1989 by Downtown rock-royalty couple CrisTina Martinez and Jon Spencer. Early shows were chaotic and scandalous-Spencer often performing in the nude, Martinez fighting with audience members and police-setting the tone for the band's fiery ascent. By 1995, they had reached international fame and released a lauded, major label record. Now, in 2017, the band-back with its most familiar lineup (featuring Jens Jurgensen and Hollis Queens)-has put out its first LP in 17 years, and are yet again taking New York and the world by storm. Alongside the Joshua Light Show's iconic imagery, the band affirms its status as one of the greats.

Dave Harrington Group is an ever-evolving musical project anchored by guitarist Harrington's forays into experimental rock, progressive jazz, and ambient electronics. Chaotic improvisations surge into tight rhythms, which melt into haunting atmospheres. Harrington, who toured the UK with the Joshua Light Show to great acclaim as one half of the band Darkside, brings together a number of his key New York collaborators and special guests to create a live soundtrack to the lightshow's cinematic imagery.

Man Forever, a platform for the broad-ranging compositions of John Colpitts, celebrates the Joshua Light Show's 50th anniversary with his diverse ensemble, featuring superstars from the worlds of avant-rock, jazz, and classical music, including up-and-coming percussion trio, Tigue (full lineup TBA). Colpitts aka Kid Millions is a lauded drummer, who first came to acclaim as the "kabuki demon" (New York Times) in Brooklyn's psychedelia masters, Oneida. With Man Forever, Colpitts takes his unique approach to drumming into unchartered territories, creating a platform for collaboration that echoes through the lightshow's kinetic visual improvisations. Choral landscapes, frenzied strings, and meditative drones come together in a delirious mix, anchored by Colpitts' full-throttled rhythms.

Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith is a young composer of electronic music whose profile has quickly skyrocketed into the mainstream. From her formative years on Orcas Island, off the coast of Washington state, where a neighbor lent her his vintage Buchla modular synthesizer, she's steadily amassed a global fanbase. Taking inspiration from the early minimalism of composer Terry Riley and armed with Buchla's pioneering instrument, Smith's music is overflowing with analog pulsations and braided melodic patterns. Ethereal vocals soar overhead, weaving together a complex and beautiful tapestry of sound, with reference points in pop and avant-classical alike. Building upon their recent collaboration at San Francisco's Exploratorium, Smith and the Joshua Light Show make their first appearance in New York together.

ABOUT NYU SKIRBALL

NYU Skirball, located in the heart of Greenwich Village, is one of New York City's major presenters of international work, and has been the premier venue for cultural and performing arts events in lower Manhattan since 2003. The 860-seat state-of-the art theater, led by Director Jay Wegman, provides a home for internationally renowned artists, innovators and thinkers. NYU Skirball hosts over 300 events annually, from re-inventions of the classics to cutting-edge premieres, in genres ranging from dance, theater and performance arts to comedy, music and film.

NYU Skirball's unique place as a non-profit cultural center within New York University enables it to draw on the University's intellectual riches and resources to enhance its programming with dialogues, public forums and conversations with artists, philosophers, scientists, Nobel Laureates and journalists.

Jay Wegman is responsible for the direction and leadership of the Center's artistic programming. He previously served as director of the Abrons Art Center at Henry Street Settlement from 2006-2016, where he curated a balance of local, international, emerging and established multi-disciplinary artists. During his tenure, Abrons was awarded a 2014 OBIE Award for Innovative Excellence and a 2015 Bessie Award for Best Production. He also served as Canon for Liturgy and the Arts at The Cathedral of St. John the Divine for over a decade and was a Fellow at The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. from 2004-2005. Jay is a graduate of Yale University.

TICKETS

Performances of Joshua Light Show will take place on Friday, September 8 and Saturday September 9 at 7:30pm. Tickets start at $40 and may be purchased online at www.nyuskirball.org, by phone at 212.998.4941, or in person at the NYU Skirball Box Office: Tuesday-Saturday, 12:00-6:00 P.M. NYU Skirball is located at 566 LaGuardia Place at Washington Square, New York, New York,10012.

Subways: A, B, C, D, E, F, M to West 4th St.; R & W to 8th Street; 6 to Astor Place

Programs, artists and ticket prices are subject to change.