“I feel like I’ve known you my whole life.”
That’s what I said to Laurie Anderson back in January 2020, weeks before the entire world went to hell. A multi-media artist of the highest order, Laurie was in town for multiple engagements, including a talk at the Royal Ontario Museum, which is where I had the chance to spend a few moments chatting with her. Along with being an artist whose work I discovered back in the late ’80s, when MuchMusic aired her engaging PSAs, Laurie is also the widow of Lou Reed, one of my heroes and someone who had a huge impact on my life.
This past Friday night, Laurie returned to Toronto’s Koerner Hall, part of the ongoing 21C Music Festival. Seeing Laurie in concert, of which this was my second time, is one of the most unique experiences I’ve had at a show. In this instance, a performance titled Let x = x, it was essentially a one-woman engagement, with the artist combing through her catalogue of music.
Surrounded by keyboards and what appeared to be a few iPads that would trigger samples and the images on the large screen behind her, Laurie played music familiar to anyone who has followed her career, including her 1981 “hit” single, “O Superman.” The song came early into the set, and was riveting.
Though “O Superman” is the acknowledged masterpiece from Laurie’s classic album, Big Science, I appreciated that she started her performance with that album’s opening track, “From The Air.” It’s an invitation to listen, but it’s also extremely haunting.
Throughout the performance, Laurie told stories, and in what’s sure to be a one-off unique moment for the Toronto audience, invited BMO Lab for Creative Research in the Arts, Performance, Emerging Technologies and AI Director David Rokeby onstage to demonstrate Voice Scoll, “an AI system that transforms spoken voice into a continually evolving visual panorama in real time.” Though there were a few technical glitches with the system running, when it did, it was might impressive to see Laurie and David’s words come to life instantly via AI. Laurie equated it to seeing our dreams come to life, and that was an appropriate analogy.
Perhaps the highlight for me was when, accompanied by Laurie on violin, the faint image of Lou Reed appeared on the screen and his voice echoed through Koerner Hall, singing “Junior Dad,” the closing track from Lulu, Reed’s collaboration controversial collaboration Metallica. It’s one of his greatest achievements, and seeing it performed by his widow put tears in my eyes.
As mentioned above, a Laurie Anderson performance is a unique experience, one that delivers and challenges the audience. With Laurie as our pilot, it’s also engaging and gives those gathered a real sense of community. I was happy to be in her presence, in a warm venue, and look forward to whatever she does next.
