Laurie Anderson

An eccentric, experimental performance artist who has composed music for dogs, invented a violin bow made of magnetic tape and scored one of the strangest pop hits ever, Laurie Anderson never fails to baffle, amuse and confound with her avant-garde creations. Graduating from Columbia University with a degree in sculpture, Anderson began making music to use in her conceptual multi-media installations and released early recordings 'It's Not the Bullet That Kills You (It's the Hole)' and 'New York Social Life' in 1977. Combining visual projections, poetry and electronic sounds, her live performances at galleries, festivals and concert halls crossed over into the pop charts when 'O' Superman', an eleven-minute ethereal, robotic synth poem shot to number two in the UK in 1982. Its startling originality and futuristic, other-worldly feel sent the 1982 album 'Big Science' into the top 30 and earned Anderson a record deal with Warner Bros. She went on to work with Peter Gabriel on follow-up 'Mister Heartbreak' in 1984 and her orchestral, sonic pop sound led to collaborations with Jean Michel Jarre, Brian Eno and William S. Burroughs. She worked with Lou Reed for 15 years and in 2008 they were married. Reed and Antony Hegarty (of Antony and the Johnsons) featured on her 2010 album 'Homeland' on which she took the persona of her alter ego Fenway Bergamot tackling the impact of the 9/11 attacks on New York. In 2013 she performed her work 'The Language of the Future' at the River to River Festival in New York. In 2018 she released a collaborative album with Kronos Quartet titled 'Landfall'. The album was inspired by Anderson's experiences of Hurricane Sandy.

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