Vincent Joins BREATHEWATCHLISTENTOUCH: The Work and Music of Yoko Ono Performance

St. Vincent joins the artist lineup for BREATHEWATCHLISTENTOUCH: The Work and Music of Yoko Ono at Walt Disney Concert Hall on Friday, March 22. Throughout this exceptional evening, Ono's art and music will be performed by a diverse group of artists - whose work is informed by Ono's legacy - in a concert-length celebration of her 60-plus year career. The concert is part of the LA Phil's season-long Fluxus Festival.

St. Vincent, aka Annie Clark, is one of the most innovative and enigmatic presences in modern music. Over the course of her five albums, she has explored emotive ballads, upbeat pop arrangements, and experimental spaces alike, incorporating postmodern guitar solos and electronic pulses that display a sweetly sinister sensibility. A Grammy Award®-winning artist who is critically acclaimed the world over, she has collaborated with artists ranging from David Byrne to L.A. hip-hop producer Sounwave. St. Vincent also recently released her signature Ernie Ball Music Man guitar and made her directorial debut with the short horror film The Birthday Party. Her latest album, MASSEDUCTION, was released in late 2017 and was The Guardian's Album of the Year, while Jon Pareles of The New York Times named it his #1 album of 2017. MASSEDUCTION has been supported by performances on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, The Graham Norton Show, Later... with Jools Holland, and The Ellen Degeneres Show. MASSEDUCTION won the 2019 Grammy Award® for Best Rock Song and was nominated Best Alternative Music Album. St. Vincent also performed at the 2019 Grammy Award® show with Dua Lipa.

Special guests for this performance also include experimental R&B violinist and vocalist Sudan Archives, singer, songwriter, and former Dirty Projectors member Amber Coffman; Juilliard-trained composer, songwriter, and producer Shruti Kumar; La Marisoul, lead singer of Grammy Award®-winning Mexican-American band La Santa Cecilia; electronic music artist and activist Madame Gandhi; Shirley Manson, lead vocalist of the alternative rock band Garbage; choreographer, visual artist, and creative director Nina McNeely; scholar, queer community organizer, multifaceted artist, and activist Kamil Oshundara; composer, activist, entrepreneur, bilingual singer, and Chilean pop artist Francisca Valenzuela; and We Are KING, who were nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Urban Contemporary Album in 2017.

Imagine Grapefruits: An Idea Exchange Market will take place before the concert throughout Walt Disney Concert Hall, starting at 6:30 PM. Imagine Grapefruits is a pre-concert marketplace of ideas where a wide scope of local arts programs, DJs, book presses, and artist collectives led by people of color, women, and non-binary creators will be on hand to share their work and show off the scope of the scene.

Yoko Ono is one of the most influential artistic figures of the 20th century. Her work as a performance artist and musician is conceptually bold and politically confrontational, but it's delivered with a lyrical touch - one informed by her dedication to peace and spirituality - giving it a great sense of warmth and humanity. That warmth has inspired an incredible range of artists and musicians, and continues to resound today.

Produced in partnership with Girlschool, this concert is named after Ono's Dance Piece X, a Fluxus score that is a fitting summation of the grace, love, and sense of peace that permeates her career:

"Breathe

Watch

Listen

Touch

and move between

the Earth."

Fluxus was a wily, nebulous - and deeply influential - anti-establishment art movement that emerged in the 1960s. Comprised of an international collective of artists, composers, and poets, Fluxus aimed to collapse what it considered the false wall between art and life. The LA Phil's Fluxus Festival is a survey curated by Christopher Rountree, in collaboration with the Getty Research Institute, in which the often humorous, frequently challenging music and performances of Fluxus will be presented on and off-site. This exploration will include a combination of live events, printed materials, and symposia, including surprise appearances, installations, and performances throughout the LA Phil's 2018/19 Centennial season.

For more information about Fluxus Festival please visit: laphil.com/fluxus

Founded by Anna Bulbrook in 2016, Girlschool is a music festival and creative community with a mission: to celebrate, connect, and lift women-identified artists, leaders, and voices. This is the LA Phil's first collaboration with Girlschool. For more information about Girlschool please visit: girlschoolla.com.

Photo credit: Nedda Afsari

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