Landfall: An Evening with Laurie Anderson and Kronos Quartet
2013-04-20
Bing Concert Hall
Stanford University, 327 Lasuen St, Palo Alto, CA
8:00 PM, Saturday, April 20, 2013

[8:04 PM lights down, announcements; Introduction by Wiley Hausam]

Landfall (2013)(West coast premiere)
[36 untitled segments of varying length]
[set ends 9:16 PM]

[9:23 PM Jonathan Berger moderating; ends 9:50 PM]

* Laurie Anderson: violin, optigan, vox, composer, librettist; * Hank Dutt: viola; * David Harrington: violin; * John Sherba: violin; * Jeffrey Zeigler: cello.

7:45 PM, seated and ready to read the program notes. 7:58 PM, done with that task. Not much help, those notes, but I'll add links below for you to read and judge for yourself.

Stanford LIVE Event page

Stanford LIVE program notes

Stanford LIVE promo article

Tiffany Draut's brief review of the world premiere show (Feb 1 at Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, University of Maryland, College Park, MD)

So what did I think? I think it was a failed souffle. There were a few interesting ingredients, and it got puffed up with potential in the baking, but collapsed into a disappointing mess upon being served.

More particulars? The disappointing lack of any strong connecting narrative. Excessive use of open instrumental space without much interesting in the way of musical development. The notion that the artist can just throw out some half-baked ideas and hope that the audience finds meaning in the resulting chaos.