#4309: With Laurie Anderson

New York-based Laurie Anderson, is a composer, artist, and collaborator who has worked in film, music, installations (both VR and not), writing, photography, and sculpture. She was NASA’s first artist-in-residence, has published several books, invented instruments, and produced numerous videos, films, radio pieces, and original scores for dance and film.

Her latest recording, with Tibetan multi-instrumentalist Tenzin Choegyal and composer and activist Jesse Paris Smith, is called Songs from the Bardo. It's an enveloping combination of sound, flow, and words, which becomes a guided and grounded journey through the text of the Tibetan Book of the Dead. With flute, lute and Tibetan singing bowls from Tenzin Choegyal, piano and crystal bowls as drone by Jesse Paris Smith, guest cellist Rubin Kodheli and guest percussionist Shahad Ismaily, plus Laurie Anderson’s even and calm speaking voice (and her violin), the record invites someone who may or may no longer have a body to pay attention and to celebrate being awake.

Laurie Anderson joins John Schaefer in conversation about the record, and on deep threads about awareness, impermanence, and listening without distraction. Also, hear many selections from Songs From the Bardo. In her absorbing storyteller fashion, Laurie Anderson recounts how she wanted to learn meditation to focus her mind like a beam, how she was in a plane crash, and relates how her teacher, Mingyur Rinpoche, the Tibetan Buddhist lama, would try to practice how to feel sad, without actually becoming sad. 
- Caryn Havlik

Program #4309: With Laurie Anderson: Songs From The Bardo (First aired 12/12/2019)

ARTIST: Laurie Anderson, Tenzin Choegyal, Jesse Paris Smith
WORK: Listen Without Distraction [1:12]
RECORDING: Songs from the Bardo
SOURCE: Smithsonian Folkways
INFO: folkways.si.edu/songs-from-the-bardo

ARTIST: Laurie Anderson, Tenzin Choegyal, Jesse Paris Smith
WORK: The Three Jewels [4:18]
RECORDING: Songs from the Bardo
SOURCE: Smithsonian Folkways
INFO: folkways.si.edu/songs-from-the-bardo

ARTIST: Laurie Anderson, Tenzin Choegyal, Jesse Paris Smith
WORK: Listen Without Distraction [5:12]
RECORDING: Songs from the Bardo
SOURCE: Smithsonian Folkways
INFO: folkways.si.edu/songs-from-the-bardo

ARTIST: Laurie Anderson, Tenzin Choegyal, Jesse Paris Smith
WORK: Jigten [6:04] Lotus Born No Need to Fear
RECORDING: Songs from the Bardo
SOURCE: Smithsonian Folkways
INFO: folkways.si.edu/songs-from-the-bardo

ARTIST: Laurie Anderson, Tenzin Choegyal, Jesse Paris Smith
WORK: Lotus Born No Need to Fear [7:08] 
RECORDING: Songs from the Bardo
SOURCE: Smithsonian Folkways
INFO: folkways.si.edu/songs-from-the-bardo

ARTIST: Laurie Anderson
WORK: From the Air [1:00]
RECORDING: Big Science
SOURCE: Nonesuch 130428
INFO: nonesuch.com

ARTIST: Laurie Anderson, Tenzin Choegyal, Jesse Paris Smith
WORK: Moon in the Water [5:15] 
RECORDING: Songs from the Bardo
SOURCE: Smithsonian Folkways
INFO: folkways.si.edu/songs-from-the-bardo

ARTIST: Laurie Anderson
WORK: O Superman (for Massenet) [2:18] 
RECORDING: Big Science
SOURCE: Nonesuch 130428
INFO: nonesuch.com