Laurie Anderson & Christian McBride with special guest Rubin Kodheli

Laurie Anderson is one of America’s most renowned and daring creative pioneers. Best known for her multimedia presentations, innovative use of technology and first-person style, she is a writer, director, visual artist and vocalist who has created groundbreaking works that span the worlds of art, theater, and experimental music.

Her recording career, launched by “O Superman” in 1981, includes many records released by Warner Records and Nonesuch, among them “Big Science” (1982), the soundtrack to her feature film “Home of the Brave”(1986) “Strange Angels” (1989) “Life on a String” (2001) “Homeland” (2008) the Grammy winning “Landfall” (2018) and the Grammy nominated “Songs from the Bardo” (2019) on Smithsonian Folkways.

Other recordings include numerous works for podcast and radio including the most recent “Party in the Bardo” series for WESU Middletown.  She has performed music and toured worldwide with many of her own groups and bands and composed orchestra works “It’s Cold Outside” (1982) and“ Songs for A.E.” for the American Composers Orchestra (2000), the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra and in 2019 for the Brno Philharmonic Orchestra  conducted by Dennis Russell Davies.

Anderson's live shows range from spoken word works to multi- faceted multimedia stage performances such as “United States Parts 1-4” (1982) “Stories from the Nerve Bible” (1992)  “Songs and Stories for Moby Dick” (1999) “Delusion” (2010) and “Language of the Future” (2017). Anderson continues to collaborate with Christian McBride, Brian Eno and Philip Glass as well as improvising with Bill Laswell and John Zorn.

In 2002, Anderson was appointed the first artist-in-residence of NASA which culminated in her 2004 solo performance “The End of the Moon”, the second in a series of three “story” performances along with “Happiness” (2001) and “Dirtday” (2012) all of which toured extensively internationally.

Anderson has published eight books. Her most recent release - “All The Things I Lost In The Flood” (Rizzoli) – is a series of essays about pictures, language and codes. She is currently writing and compiling “The Art of the Straight Line” a series of essays and interviews about tai chi in the work of her late husband Lou Reed who she lived with and collaborated with for twenty-one years.

Anderson’s visual work has been presented in museums around the world. Major audio-visual installations include “The Record of the Time- Sound in the Work of Laurie Anderson” (2003), World Expo 2005 in Aichi, Japan and “Habeas Corpus” (2015) a collaboration with Guantanamo detainee Mohammed el Gharani  at the Park Avenue Armory in New York City for which she was awarded, for the second time,  Yoko Ono’s “Courage Award for the Arts”.

Anderson’s films include numerous music videos and installation works as well as “Carmen” (1992), the high definition “Hidden Inside Mountains” (2005) and Arte-commissioned  “Heart of a Dog” (2015) which was chosen as an official selection of the 2015 Venice and Toronto Film Festivals.

Her series of paintings have been exhibited widely.  She has been an artist in residence at many places among them Princeton Atelier (2008 and 2019) and at EMPAC in Troy, New York from (2012-2015) as Distinguished Artist in Residence. She has long term exhibition at Mass MoCA. Her digital and VR collaborations with Hsin-Chien Huang have won awards at both the Venice Film Festival and Cannes Film Festival.

The recipient of numerous honorary doctorates and awards among them Guggenheim Fellowship (1982) and the Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize (2007) she continues to experiment with many different forms and contexts for her work.

As an activist Anderson has participated in many groups including Women’s Action Coalition and Occupy Art. As a Buddhist she is an active  She lives and works in New York and Springs Long Island.

Christian McBride is a six-time GRAMMY Award winning bassist/composer and the host of NPR's Jazz Night in America. Since the early 1990's Christian McBride has recorded on over 300 dates as a sideman. However, he's been a leader from his debut recording in 1995. Aside from various stints with Sting, Chick Corea, Pat Metheny, Roy Haynes, Freddie Hubbard and George Duke, McBride has been artist-in-residence and artistic director with organizations such as Jazz House Kids, Los Angeles Philharmonic, The Jazz Museum in Harlem, Jazz Asoen and NJPAC (New Jersey Performing Arts Center -- Newark). McBride manages to tour consistently with his quartet, the New Jawn. He also fronts the GRAMMY-winning Christian McBride Big Band, whose Mack Avenue recordings, The Good Feeling and Bringin' It won the GRAMMY® Award for Best Large Jazz Ensemble Album in 2012 and 2017, respectively. In addition, McBride hosts "The Lowdown: Conversations With Christian" on Sirius/XM and DJs at clubs as DJ Brother Mister. McBride was recently named the artistic director of the historic Newport Jazz Festival, taking over the reins from the festival's longtime artistic director and founder, George Wein. 

Composer Rubin Kodheli (ko-thé-lee) is a celebrated, versatile, genre-transcending creative rebel. The inspirational tapestry of his work is intentionally woven from blended threads of rock, jazz and classical influences, a stylistic trademark that has afforded Kodheli a career rich in its diversity of output. From his compositions appearing in feature films such as Precious (2009), to his original symphonic rock compositions, to his collaborations as a performer with genre defining artists - including Philip Glass, Henry Threadgill, Christian McBride, Meredith Monk, Joan Jett, Tom Harrell, and Snoop Dogg.

Recently Mr.Kodheli has been performing Letters to Jack, created by the amazing and legendary writer, composer, filmmaker Laurie Anderson.

Kodheli’s eclectic work amounts to an intriguing sonic collage able to enrapture and captivate audiences.

Kodheli began his musical journey as a cellist in Albania, where, as a child, he would stay up into the night absorbing celebratory performances of traditional Albanian folk music or spend days attending numerous rehearsals with his mother, singer and actress Justina Aliaj (a-lee-i). By age fifteen, he moved to Belgium to pursue formal studies at l'Académie d'Uccle and later to Germany to attend the Richard Strauss Konservatorium. In the 1990s Kodheli received a scholarship to The Juilliard School, where he studied as a pupil of cello visionary Fred Sherry.

Post-Juilliard Kodheli’s own musical improv and work with dancers as well as with other improviser composers compelled him to learn composition. In 2013 choreographer Elisa Monte hired him to write a fifteen-minute piece for which they won a grant from New Music U.S.A.

Creating instrumental alchemy in his compositions and performances, Kodheli deftly molds the cello to emulate the timbre of a guitar, a drum, or a human voice; his rhythmic aptitudes and intuition for percussion enable him to play piano as well. His compositions teem with nuance, providing the opportunity to listen repeatedly, each time ripe with the possibility of hearing something that previously went unnoticed. Immersing audiences in honest musical explorations, Kodheli pushes listeners to engage, question and contemplate. Similarly, his compositional work empowers directors to drive home the emotional anchoring of their films.

This panoply of unique musical experiences, from childhood through the present, continues organically to guide and mold his work with filmmakers, rap artists, dancers, choreographers, fellow composers, and various other creative professionals in New York City, and around the world.