Music enthusiasts, don’t miss out! New York Public Library’s Library of Performing Art presents
Rhapsodic City: Music of New York
The six week music love affair will start TONIGHT, March 20th at 6 p.m. with the 30th anniversary of Style Wars. It will be followed by a panel discussion with film maker Henry Chalfant, sculptor/painter Carlos “Mare139” Rodriguez, and moderated by painter/DJ iona rozeal brown.
On March 27th at 6 p.m., music icons Debbie Harry and Chris Stein of Blondie join Will Hermes, senior critic of Rolling Stone and author of Love Goes to Buildings on Fire: Five Years in New York That Changed Music Forever for a discussion of the style and sound of the New York Music scene in the 1970s.
Dr. Wilbur Larch: “I came as a physician to the abandoned children and unhappily pregnant women. I had hoped to become a hero. But in St. Cloud’s there was no such position. In the lonely, sordid world of lost children, there were no heroes to be found. And so I became the caretaker of many, father of none. Well, in a way, there was one. His name was Homer Wells.”
And with that, we bid you a tranquil weekend set to Rachel Portman’s lilting score for “The Cider House Rules.” John Irving, who wrote the novel on which the film was based and also won an Academy Award for penning the screenplay, will be LIVE’s opening guest this upcoming Tuesday. Until then, goodnight, you princes of Maine, you kings of New England.
One of the stories about piracy is that it’s a kind of sharing. Isn’t sharing good? Sharing creative works makes a little community, like when you’re lending out books. One person borrows from another person, then gives it to somebody else… It’s a very small community, 5 or 6 people at most. I would say that’s very different in type than the anonymous and humongous piracy sites that exist now. You have no idea who you’re getting something from and you’re not sharing it with anyone. You’re reaching into an anonymous pot and taking it. These websites also have a lot of ads. When you share books with friends, an ad doesn’t pop up saying ‘You might also like a garden hose.’ It’s not the same kind of exchange when it’s monetized that way.
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David Byrne in conversation with author Chris Ruen at LIVE last night, where they discussed the ongoing battle over digital piracy and its effect on the future creativity of music.
“I’ve played the Disney Hall here and Carnegie Hall and places like that. And it’s been very exciting. But I also noticed that sometimes the music that I had written, or was writing at the time, didn’t sound all that great in some of those halls. We managed, but sometimes those halls didn’t seem exactly suited to the music I was making or had made. So I asked myself: Do I write stuff for specific rooms? Do I have a place, a venue, in mind when I write? Is that a kind of model for creativity? Do we all make things with a venue, a context, in mind?” —David Byrne’s 2010 TED Talk
Have you guessed any of our Fall Season guests yet? Here’s a little hint at another: we bring you a gorgeous video of Annie Clark, widely known as St. Vincent, playing “What Me Worry?” with the help of pop violinist Andrew Bird. As your eyes close, and your brain wanders to dark, divine corners, think about other artists who have manipulated standard song-writing with controlled chaos. She’s been hanging around with one of those folks…
More for poetry lovers and music lovers alike: Chuck Berry, who unabashedly admits to reading only six books in his lifetime, is welcomed into the poetic canon in this homage to rock and roll music in The Millions and how its seemingly simple lyrics teach people to love language.
His mother’s lessons
Van Cliburn’s mother told him, “Don’t beat the piano. Caress the keys. Listen for the eye of the sound.” Like a storm, each note has an eye – the still center around which all its sound and vibration revolves.
One of thirteen slides by LIVE artist-in-residence Flash Rosenberg from our May 15 event with Van Cliburn. Flash draws our programs as they’re happening, creating conversation portraits. See the whole set here… and her final animations here…
Photo from last night’s event with Van Cliburn!Here, Joyce Yang, a silver medalist in the 2005 Van Cliburn Competition, plays for Cliburn and LIVE director Paul Holdengräber. See more photos by LIVE photographer Jori Klein from the evening here…
Let’s continue the music celebration with Mary Wells! She gave Motown Records its first number one hit today in 1964 with “My Guy”, but she also produced a bunch more on-point 60s pop, including the above song “Bye Bye Baby”. I first discovered the song from the 60s girl pop compilation, One Kiss Can Lead to Another: Girl Group Sounds, Lost & Found, put together by Rhino Records (it’s the best compilation of the genre I’ve ever heard). She also did the requisite for all promising female soul pop singers of her time: recorded an album with Marvin Gaye.
Frank Gehry with Barbara Isenberg & Alex Ross on the LIVE stage three years ago. Watch or listen to the three discuss the intersection of music and architecture, and what a space could do for the music played within it…and vice versa.
