BAM 2010 Next Wave Festival Opens With DELUSION

Pioneering performance artist Laurie Anderson opens the 2010 BAM Next Wave Festival with Delusion, a farreaching multimedia work exploring memory, identity, and longing. Delusion received its world premiere at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics and was performed recently at Cal Performances in Berkeley, CA and at London's Barbican Centre. The BAM engagement marks its New York premiere.

In Delusion, music redolent with Tibetan temple horns and Arabic strings is performed by Anderson on electronically enhanced violin with a supporting virtuoso ensemble and video imagery. Delusion's structure imitates the meandering nature of one's personal thoughts, exploring themes from politics
to personal loss-and touching on topics including the decline of the American empire, time, the mystic who started the Russian space program, punctuation, heritage-fusing the internal and external worlds into a mystical whole. Anderson shifts between her own voice and that of a male persona, Fenway Bergamot.

Delusion's striking visual elements include Anderson's animation, film sequences by noted cinematographers Maryse Alberti and Toshiaki Ozawa, and additional animation and overall video design by artist Amy Khoshbin. Performers include the virtuoso composer/performers Eyvind Kang
on viola and Colin Stetson on horns. Delusion includes two signature pieces of music and lyrics from Anderson's acclaimed album Homeland, which was released in June by Nonesuch Records.

The Financial Times said "[Anderson] works her magic, and the piece, with its contradictions, shafts of insight and splinters of wit lingers with you, long after the event, like a powerful dream." The San Francisco Chronicle commented, "As much as Anderson's beguiling presence and creative mastery, it's the tension between its playful and somber sides that gives Delusion its poignant weight."

Laurie Anderson is a leading contemporary performance artist. Known primarily for her multimedia
presentations, she has cast herself in roles as varied as visual artist, composer, poet, photographer, filmmaker, electronics whiz, vocalist, and instrumentalist. Anderson has toured the United States and internationally with her shows which range from simple spoken word performances to elaborate multimedia events. Major works include United States: Parts I-IV (1983, Spring Season), Empty Places (1989 Next Wave), The Nerve Bible (1995), and Songs and Stories from Moby Dick (1999 Next Wave)-a multimedia stage performance based on the novel by Herman Melville. In the fall of 2001, Anderson toured the US and Europe with a three-person band, performing music from her album Life on a String. She has also presented many solo works, including Happiness, which premiered in 2001 and toured internationally through the spring of 2003. In 2002, Anderson was appointed the first artistin-residence of NASA out of which she developed her solo performance The End of the Moon (2005 Spring Season). Her score for Trisha Brown's acclaimed piece O z?o?ony/O composite (2009 Next Wave) premiered at the Opera Garnier in Paris in December 2004. Anderson was also part of the team that created the opening ceremony for the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens. Recently, Anderson and Lou Reed curated the Vivid Live Festival at the Sydney Opera House. Homeland, Anderson's first studio recording in 10 years, was released by Nonesuch Records in June. A major retrospective of her visual art will open in Sao Paolo, Brazil this month and a book of Anderson's stories will be published in 2011.

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