Four Nights with Laurie Anderson

Laurie Anderson is a performance artist, composer, inventor, and storyteller, and has pushed the boundaries of so many different art forms that it's difficult to even assign one title to her.  

Born in Illinois, she attended Barnard College and Columbia University, and has since built a cross-genre and cross-media body of work that compels audiences to listen and think more deeply about art and our world. She was a pioneering conceptual artist in New York City beginning in the 1970s, performing in alternative and public spaces. Her vast opera project United States led, almost by chance, to a hit crossover song, "O Superman," which reached No. 2 on the U.K. pop charts in 1981.

In 2002 she became the first — and so far, only — artist in residence ever hosted by NASA, for which she created The End of the Moon, a solo performance and meditation on time, space, and curiosity. In 2018 she won a Grammy for "Landfall," a collaboration with the Kronos Quartet. In 2024, she released her album "Amelia," featuring a major work about Amelia Earhart originally commissioned by the American Composers Orchestra, which premiered it at Carnegie Hall under Dennis Russell Davies’ direction.

Over the course of five events at Tanglewood, audiences will see that her work cannot be neatly labeled, categorized, or constrained by genre. On Thursday, Aug. 13, Anderson, members of the BSO, Dennis Russell Davies, and guest artists perform Amelia as well as the world premiere of her work What War Is This?, a series of short stories about the Declaration of Independence. 

See her in conversation with Peter Sellars on Saturday, Aug. 15, and see her work in conversation with other contemporary composers on Wednesday, Aug. 12, at the hands of Grammy-nominated pianist Adam Tendler. On Sunday, Aug. 16, she presents what she calls a "drone-based sonic experience," featuring guitars from her late husband Lou Reed's collection, and closes the week that evening with The Republic of Love, an evening of music and storytelling about the country's past and present. 

What ties it all together is Anderson herself, forever a pioneer. She invents her own instruments, uses technology for wonderous effects rather than pure gilded spectacle, and has a way of making the familiar suddenly strange, inviting audiences to sit inside a question rather than rush past it.  

One can never know what to expect from Anderson. She is an artist who trusts you to feel, listen, and think for yourself, and leave hearing the world a little differently. 

Maya Shwayder is the BSO's Senior Contributing Editor and Copywriter.

Robert Kirzinger is the BSO's Director of Program Publications.

References

"Laurie Anderson | Biography, Art, Performance, O Superman, Home of the Brave, Lou Reed, & Facts." Encyclopaedia Britannica.

"About." Laurie Anderson – Official Website.

"Laurie Anderson." The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). 

"NASA Gives Space to Artist in Residence." NPR, July 3, 2004.