Waiting for Laurie Anderson
From the pews in St. Thomas Church, we watched the color slowly fade from the stained-glass windows as the sun set just shy of 7 p.m. on Tuesday, May 2.
We were waiting for “Waiting for the Barbarians,” a concert presented by Death of Classical as part of “Archive of Desire,” a festival inspired by the Alexandrian poet C.P. Cavafy.
The program began with Rufus Wainwright’s “Chandelier’ (not to be confused with Sia’s), which the composer performed in bejeweled, ripped jeans. It was at times schmaltzy, with prominent balalaika, which didn’t always work with Wainwright’s slurring enunciation.
This was followed by the Brooklyn Youth Chorus’s cacophonous whispers in Helga Davis and Petros Klampanis’s “Cavafy Ghost.” Klampanis’s plangent double bass complemented Davis’s Nina Simone-esque vocalizations. Selective listening, however, was needed to make out the simultaneous Greek and English.
Though I had a “premium” seat, I could only hear, not see, The Knights orchestra. To fill the church, singers and instrumentalists were heavily mic’d. This wouldn’t have been a problem, except for the placement of the speakers made me feel as though harp was coming at me from all sides.
A different “ghost” was conjured by Dimitris Papadimitriou and Nathan Thatcher’s “The Return” — soprano Eleni Calenos, wearing a sparkly gown, made me feel as if I was hearing the spirit of Maria Callas.
Calenos was just as bellisima in Nico Muhy’s “Far Away Songs,” characterized by snapping strings, bells, and farty bass. She sang an intricate melisma on “sounds, like music in the night.”
“Voices,” by festival curator Paola Prestini, once again featured the Brooklyn Youth Choir — hands over mouths, grasping at the air. It was creepy, yet effective. However, I couldn’t stop thinking about that TikTok sound: “the voices, the voices!”
But they saved the best act — the one everyone was waiting for — for last. Laurie Anderson got on stage, electric violin in hand, and started reciting: “Why isn’t anything going on in the senate? Why aren’t they legislating?” — adding, as an aside, “This sounds familiar.”
She then dropped a Trap-style beat, chanting “The barbarians are coming today.” I turned to my concert companion, whose mouth was agape and grinning.
The line was picked up and echoed, surreally, by the youth choir: “The barbarians are coming.” “Unless,” said Anderson, with a wink, “we ourselves are the barbarians.” The piece ended with Cavafy’s blessing: “May your road to Ithaka be a long one.”
Just a month earlier, I’d seen Laurie Anderson at the Paris Review Revel, where she was the benefit chair.
Nursing a peach Bellini, I’d approached the jetlagged Anderson (she’d just gotten back from Stockholm, she said) to say I was a big fan.
I later cringed at my cliché. But, in my defense, I was starstruck. Far more than I was over Daniel Craig and Rachel Weisz, who were also at the Revel for unknown reasons.
Anderson opened the Revel ceremony with droning violin, over which she intoned something along the lines of, “I had a dream where I was a dog, and my dad was there. He petted me and said, ‘that’s a good dog,’ and I was happy.”
The performance called to mind the Buddhist concept of Bardo — the place in between life and death, where all dogs go by the way — which Anderson has drawn upon for other works, including ones honoring her late husband Lou Reed.
When Anderson used a voice modulator that made her sound Darth Vader-deep, it was funny, bizarre, and poignant at the same time.
