Center for the Arts

Wesleyan University’s WESU Middletown 88.1FM to rebroadcast all episodes of “Party in the Bardo: Conversations with Laurie Anderson” Thursday, February 18 through Thursday, May 6, 2021

Middletown, Conn.—Wesleyan University’s WESU Middletown 88.1FM will rebroadcast all episodes of the radio show “Party in the Bardo: Conversations with Laurie Anderson,” created and hosted by writer, director, visual artist, and vocalist Laurie Anderson, from Thursday, February 18 through Thursday, May 6, 2021 at 10pm. Each two-hour program will be available to stream from WESU's show archives for two weeks following each broadcast on www.wesufm.org. Please see below for full schedule and description of episodes, and for more information about the series as well as Laurie Anderson’s artist residency at Wesleyan’s Center for the Arts.

“Since the early ‘80s, I’ve dreamed of...having a radio show in the middle of the night” said Laurie Anderson. “When time slows down, where the lines between sleeping and waking, between dreams and reality, are getting blurred, and when people’s defenses drop away, and logic just seems to be very limiting.”

Anderson’s featured guests are writers Jonathan Cott and Don Shewey, poet Paul Muldoon, artist Marina Abramović, and musicians Bruce Odland, Arto Lindsay, ANOHNI, Jason Moran, Kevin Hearn, and Christian McBride. Each guest supplies songs that fascinate, delight, and move them, and provide a jumping-off point for their wide ranging, free form conversations.

The series originally premiered on Anderson’s 73rd birthday - Friday, June 5, 2020 - and aired through Friday, November 6, 2020. “Party in the Bardo" was dedicated to producer Hal Willner and musician Lou Reed, who co-hosted the show "New York Shuffle" on SiriusXM Radio.

“Party in the Bardo” was created and hosted by Laurie Anderson as part of her 2019-2020 artist residence at Wesleyan University’s Center for the Arts, and is funded by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the Philip J. '71 and Lynn Rauch Fund for Innovation, with support from Wesleyan University’s Center for the Arts and WESU Middletown 88.1 FM.

Broadcast Schedule for “Party in the Bardo: Conversations with Laurie Anderson”
Each two-hour program will be available to stream from the show archives of WESU Middletown 88.1FM for two weeks following each broadcast on www.wesufm.org.

Thursday, February 18, 2021 at 10pm
Episode One
A whimsical conversation with writer Jonathan Cott, a contributing editor at Rolling Stone and the recent author of “Listening: Interviews 1970-1989” (University of Minnesota Press, April 2020), about hesitation and ways of looking at time. The conversation wanders through ideas of perfection, beauty, symmetry, mayflies, mosquitoes, and childhood memories. Includes the track "Song for Bob" composed by Anderson and performed by pianist Timo Andres from the Nonesuch Records compilation album "I Still Play” (May 2020).

Thursday, February 25, 2021 at 10pm
Episode Two
Composer and sound artist Bruce Odland shares music and recordings from his collaborations with Anderson, as well as a track from "Dokument #2" (January 2020), Anderson's album with Brian Eno and Ebe Oke. Includes tunes by William Basinski, Billie Holiday, Miles Davis, Nina Simone, Janelle Monae, Johannes Brahms, Bill Frisell, Annea Lockwood and Bob Bielecki, Lou Reed, Jem Finer, and Arvo Pärt.

Thursday, March 4, 2021 at 10pm
Episode Three
Irish poet, professor of poetry, editor, critic, playwright, lyricist, and translator Paul Muldoon discusses poems, epic anthems, and songs about love, getting lost, leaving and saying goodbye, murder, islands, and America. Includes Muldoon reading his "Drive-by at the Drive-in" (a remake of Aristophanes' "The Frogs"), plus recordings and music by Walt Whitman, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, William Butler Yeats, Allen Ginsberg, and two tracks by Bob Dylan.

Thursday, March 11, 2021 at 10pm
Episode Four
Musician and artist Arto Lindsay talks about songwriting, working with other musicians, Brazilian music, music about prisons, and gagaku (Japanese imperial court classical music and dance). The episode features "Bright Red," Lindsay’s collaboration with Anderson produced by Brian Eno, and Anderson's collaboration with Peter Gabriel on "Excellent Birds.”

Thursday, March 18, 2021 at 10pm
Episode Five
Artist Marina Abramović discusses love, beauty, uncertainty, jealousy, death, disaster, talking to animals, meditation, breathing, and opening the heart; as well as Abramović's "7 Deaths of Maria Callas" which was livestreamed from Munich in September 2020 and will tour to Athens, Berlin, Florence, and Paris, and the solo exhibition "After Life" at the Royal Academy (September through December 2021). Includes Abramović's "Eagle Song," Anderson's "O Superman (For Massenet)" which she describes as "a song about justice, power, love, and what's left when they crumble," and Anderson's collaborations with William S. Burroughs on "Sharkey's Night" and Tenzin Choegyal and Jesse Paris Smith on "Songs from the Bardo," as well as on Lou Reed's "Blue Christmas" with Kate and Anna McGarrigle and Rufus and Martha Wainwright, plus amazing feeding calls and sounds performed by the humpback whale.

Thursday, March 25, 2021 at 10pm
Intermission
This intermission following the first five episodes features two hours of long durational works curated by Anderson, including pieces by Brian Eno, La Monte Young, Pandit Pran Nath, and Max Richter, as well as parts of “Songs from the Bardo,” Anderson's collaboration with Tenzin Choegyal and Jesse Paris Smith, plus William Basinski’s “Disintegration Loops.” "How do you stop when things are already stopped?" said Laurie Anderson of the intermission episode, which represents a pause and offers some different meditative ways to hear music.

Thursday, April 1, 2021 at 10pm
Episode Six
Writer, therapist, and pleasure activist Don Shewey reads Coleman Barks' translation of Rumi's “The Guest House,” and shares works and recordings including two tracks by Ken Nordine, Judy Collins and Leonard Cohen's versions of "Famous Blue Raincoat," and The Velvet Underground, Bing Crosby, and Nico's versions of "Wrap Your Troubles in Dreams." The episode also includes some Gamelan music - Don Shewey is a member of Gamelan Kusuma Laras, whose Music Director is University Professor of Music I. Harjito.

Thursday, April 8, 2021 at 10pm
Episode Seven
Iconic singer and visual artist ANOHNI discusses musical inspirations, shamans, shape shifting, demons, and New York City and shares works of rage, howling, despondence, and hope by Yoko Ono, Diamanda Galás, and Aretha Franklin, two tunes by both Nina Simone and Lou Reed; Antony performing "Candy Says" with Lou Reed; and both Antony and The Johnsons and Joan Baez's versions of "Another World."

Thursday, April 15, 2021 at 10pm
Episode Eight
Pianist, composer, and artist Jason Moran features recordings by people who speak through music with unusual clarity, including live performances of "Alone Together" and "Get Happy" by the late Lee Konitz with Moran and Nasheet Waits in Italy, Moran's solo version of "More News / Big News" from The Armory Concert, Moran's trio The Bandwagon at the Village Vanguard, and his collaborations with Joan Jonas (from "The Shape, The Scent, The Feel of Things") and Alicia Hall Moran (from "Two Wings: The Music of Black America in Migration" with The Harlem Chamber Players); two tracks by Kelela; and both Thelonious Monk and Ella Fitzgerald's versions of "'Round Midnight."

Thursday, April 22, 2021 at 10pm
Episode Nine
Multi-instrumentalist Kevin Hearn has played with the multi-platinum selling band Barenaked Ladies for over two decades, and acted as keyboardist and musical director for Lou Reed from 2007 to 2013. Anderson reads from Lou Reed's "Andy's Dream" and shares her tunes "The Beginning of Memory" and "Dark Angel.” Hearn shares his collaboration with Reed on "Floating" and their rehearsal of "Candy Says;" Hearn's "Flying Dreams" as performed by Barenaked Ladies with Tanya Tagaq, Barenaked Ladies' a cappella version of "O Canada" from September 2020; Hearn's "The Nemophilist," and Gordon Edgar Downie's "Chancellor" with Hearn on piano; plus music from the works of David Lynch; three tracks by Lou Reed; two tracks each by Sun Ra and Randy Newman; and the world premiere of Cosmic Crew's "Hello."

Thursday, April 29, 2021 at 10pm
Episode Ten
Bassist and composer Christian McBride discusses freedom, improvisation, playing live, and grooves; sharing music and recordings by Wayne Shorter, Michael Jackson, Quincy Jones, John Adams, Ann Peebles, John Coltrane, Brian Eno, Glenn Gould, Alanis Obomsawin, James Brown, Gladys Knight and The Pips, The Temptations, Antonín Dvorák, Dianne Reeves, Pat Metheny and Lyle Mays, and Allen Ginsberg with Philip Glass, plus two tunes each from Herbie Hancock and Miles Davis.

Thursday, May 6, 2021 at 10pm
Episode Eleven
The eleventh and final episode features the return of Anderson’s first guest, writer Jonathan Cott, a contributing editor at Rolling Stone and the recent author of “Listening: Interviews 1970-1989” (University of Minnesota Press, April 2020), for a conversation about love. Features Anderson and Cott reading excerpts from thirteen poems, and includes Anderson's "Langue d'Amour" from "Mister Heartbreak," "One Beautiful Evening" and "The Island Where I Come From" from "Life on a String," and her collaboration with the Kronos Quartet on "CNN Predicts a Monster Storm" from "Landfall;" two tunes by Otis Redding; and three tunes by Lou Reed, including "The Power of the Heart," which Anderson describes as “probably my favorite song of all time and space…written the year we got married…every word rings in so many different ways for me.”

About “Party in the Bardo: Conversations with Laurie Anderson”
Laurie Anderson has created groundbreaking works that span the worlds of art, theater, and experimental music. A renowned and daring creative pioneer, she has contributed music to dance pieces by Bill T. Jones and Trisha Brown. Her 2018 recording with the Kronos Quartet, "Landfall," won a GRAMMY Award. Her most recent collaboration is 2019’s “Songs from the Bardo” with Tenzin Choegyal and Jesse Paris Smith.

“Party in the Bardo: Conversations with Laurie Anderson” brings listeners into intimate conversations between Anderson and her close friends and colleagues who share Anderson’s zeal to ask questions, explore, and understand the world. “Party in the Bardo” was created for this moment in time, when our global and local communities are grappling with the reality of COVID-19. In Tibetan tradition, the “Bardo” is the in-between: a state of existence after death and before one’s next birth, when consciousness is not connected to a physical body. Each two-hour episode initially premiered at 4am, when thoughts drift and new connections become possible —and a time, in 2020, when many of us were awake and wondering at the moment we are living though. (For those who sleep well, “Party in the Bardo” also aired again the same day at 4pm.)

As a coda to the series, “After Party in the Bardo: A Conversation with Laurie Anderson” was streamed live on Thursday, November 12, 2020 at 7pm on YouTube and Facebook, featuring a virtual conversation about the nature of time and the intimate art of listening. Anderson was joined for the conversation by three previous guests: writer Jonathan Cott, poet Paul Muldoon, and writer, therapist, and pleasure activist Don Shewey; along with WESU General Manager Benjamin Michael and Wesleyan's Campus and Community Engagement Manager Rani Arbo.

For more information about Laurie Anderson, please visit www.laurieanderson.com.

About Laurie Anderson’s Artist Residency at Wesleyan
Laurie Anderson’s year-long artist residency at Wesleyan University started in November 2019 with her performance of “The Art of Falling”—which explored the subject through sounds, images, poems, and electronics—as part of the Performing Arts Series in Crowell Concert Hall, presented by the Center for the Arts in partnership with the College of the Environment and Music Department.

She also gave a free public talk, “The Size of the Con,” that month in the Smith Reading Room of Olin Library, which addressed how to prepare for the 2020 election cycle and the tumultuous year ahead in the United States. That speech was originally commissioned by the Brooklyn Public Library, and was available as a printed chapbook following her lecture at Wesleyan.

Her residency also included work with the Toneburst Laptop and Electronic Arts Ensemble directed by Associate Professor of Music Paula Matthusen, and the Javanese Gamelan directed by Winslow-Kaplan Professor of Music Sumarsam and University Professor of Music I. Harjito. In a presentation to the Music Department’s weekly Colloquium, Anderson demonstrated new digital filters she had created for the live processing of string instruments and voice, and shared conversation about her creative process.

As part of her research on campus, Anderson connected with Wesleyan faculty, staff, and students in the Library's Special Collections and Archives, the College of the Environment, and the Center for the Humanities. She also made visits to Chester to the late Sol LeWitt's studio, and the synagogue he designed for Congregation Beth Shalom Rodfe Zedek.

About WESU Middletown 88.1FM
Founded in 1939, WESU Middletown 88.1FM is a noncommercial, community/college radio station. WESU supports a wide variety of music genres and styles of programming and is dedicated to exposing the listening audience to material generally absent from the airwaves. The station’s mission is to provide listeners with coverage of local affairs, opportunities for social and political engagement, and an eclectic mix of commercial-free music from within the community and around the globe. WESU serves Wesleyan University students and members of the greater Middletown area as an educational resource and outlet for creative expression, and is committed to furthering the interests of our local community.

For more information about WESU, please visit www.wesufm.org

About the Center for the Arts
Opened in the fall of 1973, Wesleyan University’s Center for the Arts exists to catalyze people’s creativity by engaging them in the dynamic work of diverse artists. Three inter-related activities enable the CFA to realize its purpose:

● Supporting the research, public productions, and in-studio teaching needs of the departments of Art and Art History, Dance, Music, and Theater.
● Leading inter-disciplinary collaborations and other initiatives that integrate artists into creative curricular and co-curricular initiatives.
● Organizing powerful encounters between visiting artists and diverse elements of the Wesleyan community, the greater Middletown community, statewide, and regional audiences.

The Center for the Arts gratefully acknowledges the support of its many generous funders and collaborators, including The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the New England Foundation for the Arts, as well as media sponsors the Hartford Courant, WESU 88.1FM, and WNPR.

For more information about the Center for the Arts, please call (860) 685-3355, or visit www.wesleyan.edu/cfa.

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