journal.nonesuch.com

David Byrne Accepts Lifetime Achievement Webby from Laurie Anderson

"Mr. DJ, can you play another song?"

With those five words, David Byrne accepted his Lifetime Achievement Award from label mate and friend Laurie Anderson at the 12th annual Webby Awards ceremony Tuesday night in New York City. The Webbys, honoring the best of the internet, limit speeches for all recipients to just five words, making for some fittingly creative efforts on the part of award winners. For a complete list of the speeches, visit webbyawards.com. You can read an insider's account of the evening's festivities at The Huffington Post by visiting huffingtonpost.com, with more pictures like these:

David Byrne Receives Webby Award, Walks Online TV Through "Playing the Building"

David Byrne will receive a special Webby Lifetime Achievement Award tonight at the 12th annual Webby Awards Gala at New York's Cipriani Wall Street, hosted by master of ceremonies Seth Meyers of Saturday Night Live. The Webbys are the leading international award recognizing excellence on the Internet. Also being honored tonight, as Webby Person of the Year, is Stephen Colbert. For more information, visit webbyawards.com.

Byrne's Playing the Building, a special, site-specific sound installation at New York City's Maritime Building, has been the talk of the town since it opened on May 31. For the project, Byrne converted a cavernous open space at the former Brooklyn ferry terminal to allow visitors to create a variety of sounds through a centrally located converted pump organ.

Byrne walks PitchforkTV's Nitsuh Abebe through the installation in this video:

Boing Boing TV's Xeni Jardin also gets a guided tour from the artist. You can watch it here:

Playing the Building runs through August 10 and is free and open to the public. For more information, visit davidbyrne.com.

Photographer Michael Wilson, Frequent Nonesuch Collaborator, Exhibits Work in Cincinnati

The work of Cincinnati, Ohio-based photographer Michael Wilson has graced the covers of countless Nonesuch albums over the years, including the iconic imagery featured on David Byrne's Grown Backwards, Bill Frisell's Good Dog, Happy Man, Emmylou Harris's Red Dirt Girl, and Randy Newman's Songbook Vol. I, among many others, and, most recently, the Brad Mehldau Trio's Live and Nicholas Payton's Into the Blue. His photography will be on display in an exhibit at the Boone County Public Library in Cincinnati beginning this Wednesday, June 4. Michael will be on hand to discuss his work in an opening reception that night; the exhibit will run through August 29. For more information, visit cincinnati.com.

Nonesuch Events This Weekend

Here is our weekly list of just some of the many events going on across the globe this weekend featuring Nonesuch artists:

As was reported earlier today, John Adams's Son of Chamber Symphony will be performed by Alarm Will Sound as part of the free, 12-hour Bang on a Can Marathon in New York City's Winter Garden.

As was also reported earlier today, Wonders Are Many, the film documenting the creation of Adams's opera Doctor Atomic, makes its theatrical debut today, playing in theaters in New York City and Los Angeles. Read the Journal entry here.

Choreographer John Neumeier's Parzifal: Episodes and Echo, featuring Adams's Short Ride in a Fast Machine, Tromba Lontana, Christian Zeal and Activity, The Wound-Dresser, El Dorado, and The Dharma at Big Sur, and has been performed all this month by the Hamburg Ballet at the Staatsoper in Hamburg, continues this weekend with a performance on Saturday. Tickets: hamburgballet.de.

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David Byrne's site-specific sound installation, Playing the Building, opens tomorrow afternoon in New York's Battery Maritime Building. For the summer-long event, Byrne has turned the entire building into a working instrument that visitors can play. Admission is free, with an opening reception tomorrow evening at 6 PM. Information: creativetime.org. You can also read more about it and watch a short video of the installation in action at nytimes.com.

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Richard Goode's public role as Associate Artist in the Southbank Centre's 2007/08 artist-in-residence series concludes on Saturday in a two-piano performance with pianist Jonathan Biss at Queen Elizabeth Hall. The program includes Schubert's Allegro in A minor for piano duet, "Lebenssturme"; Schumann's Six Etudes en forme de canon, arranged by Debussy for two pianos; Beethoven's Grosse Fuge, arranged for piano duet; Stravinsky's Agon, arranged for two pianos; and Debussy's En blanc et noir for two pianos. Tickets: southbankcentre.co.uk.

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k.d. lang continues the Watershed tour north of the 49th parallel this weekend with a stop at Toronto's Massey Hall tomorrow night at 8 PM. Tickets: masseyhall.com.

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Punch Brothers' Chris Thile joins the Prairie Home Companion crew Saturday night, broadcasting live from the Pan American Center at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces. Chris last appeared on the show in early April during its stop in New York City. The show airs at 3 PM PT/6 PM ET; check here for local listings, or visit prairiehome.publicradio.org.

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Steve Reich's Daniel Variations will be performed by SIGNAL, conducted by Brad Lubman, in the aforementioned Bang on a Can Marathon Saturday, sometime after midnight.

Also this weekend, the composer's Three Movements will be performed twice, tonight and tomorrow night, by the Stuttgarter Philharmoniker, led by Michael Gohl, at the Theaterhaus in Stuttgart, Germany. Info: stuttgart.de/philharmoniker. And in Brisbane, Australia, Ba Da Boom Percussion performs Reich's Drumming in a free concert at the Turbine Platform of the Brisbane Powerhouse Arts center, tomorrow at 4 PM. Info: brisbanepowerhouse.org.
 

David Byrne's "Playing the Building" Installation Opens This Saturday

David Byrne's latest project, Playing the Building, is set to open this Saturday in downtown New York City. Byrne has created a sound installation in which he's turned an entire building, the early 20th-century Battery Maritime Building, into a working instrument that visitors can play. Admission is free, with an opening reception Saturday evening at 6 PM and the exhibit open Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays through August 10.

In an interview with Time Out New York, the artist explains how it all works, how he conceived of the idea, and how Creative Time, the presenting organization, chose this particular building for him to transform.

"The idea is that the public can sit down and play this thing, and that when they do, it should be pretty obvious what's going on," says Byrne in the interview. "They'll see machines mounted up on the girders and the pipes and the columns, and they'll notice that as soon as they hit a key, a sound comes from the building."

"I think what's nice about it is that it takes away any advantage that a trained musician has," he goes on to say. "It brings everyone to a level playing field. A great musician sitting down to play it would be at about the same level as a kid."

To read the interview, visit timeout.com/newyork. For more on the project, visit creativetime.org.

David Byrne to Receive Webby Award for Lifetime Achievement

David Byrne will receive a Webby Award for Lifetime Achievement at the 12th Annual Webby Awards ceremony, to be held June 10 in New York City. The Webby's organizers announced today that Byrne will be presented with the award "for a visionary career pushing the boundaries of music, art, and technology, for more than three decades," citing his PowerPoint art, online radio station, blog, and forthcoming installation titled Playing the Building, which opens this Saturday in New York City.

Also receiving a Lifetime Achievement Award, for Film and Video, will be Saturday Night Live creator Lorne Michaels. Other special award recipients include Stephen Colbert (Person of the Year) and director Michel Gondry (Film and Video Person of the Year).

The Webby Awards, presented by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, is the leading international award honoring excellence on the Internet. In keeping with Webby tradition, winners will be limited to five-word acceptance speeches. Past speeches include Al Gore ("Please don't recount this vote"), Beastie Boys ("Can anyone fix my computer?"), and Prince ("Everything you think is true").

For more details on the Webby Award and all of this year's winners, visit webbyawards.com.

David Byrne to Discuss Bike Use on Sundance Channel Tonight

Tune in to the Sundance Channel tonight at 9 PM to catch David Byrne on the latest episode of the show Big Ideas for a Small Planet, titled "Transport." Byrne, a longtime advocate of urban bike use, will be part of a segment focusing on efforts to make cities more bike friendly. To read more about the episode, check out the Los Angeles Times green-living blog at latimesblogs.latimes.com/emeraldcity. For more information and video clips from Big Ideas for a Small Planet, visit sundancechannel.com/thegreen. For news on David's own recent biking incident, visit his blog at journal.davidbyrne.com.

There's also word there on his collaboration with Dirty Projectors for the forthcoming edition of the Red Hot compilation album to benefit AIDS research. Also on the album are Feist, Sufjan Stevens, Grizzly Bear, Sharon Jones, The Decemberists, and The National, whose Bryce Dessner is producing the collection.

David Byrne Remembers Robert Rauschenberg

David Byrne, in an op-ed contribution in today's New York Times, reflects on the life of the acclaimed American artist Robert Rauschenberg, who died Monday at the age of 82, recounting his own personal experiences with the man he knew as a friend, a colleague, and an inspiration.

In the piece, Byrne describes an early collaboration between them. He commissioned Rauschenberg create the artwork for what would become a special limited-edition version of the 1983 Talking Heads album Speaking in Tongues. Rauschenberg's concept involved a deconstruction of the album sleeve itself: separating the layers of color that are normally combined to create a single image and instead running them on translucent sheets of plastic, so that the image was altered with every shift in the position of the sheets. (Click on the image at left to see Side A, at right to see Side B.)

This is just one example Byrne cites of Rauschenberg's ability "not only think outside of the box, but to question the box's very existence," and then to inspire others to do the same. Writes Byrne:

His openness and way of seeing was contagious and inspired others in their own work — not to imitate and make pseudo-Rauschenbergs, but to see the whole world as a work of art. As corny as that may sound, that’s what he sometimes did.

To read the essay, visit nytimes.com.

Happy Birthday to David Byrne; Bryne to Create Sound Installation from NYC Building This Month

"Today is an important occasion," says David Byrne in the opening words to his 2007 Nonesuch release, The Knee Plays. Indeed. Today is his 56th birthday, and Nonesuch wishes him a very happy one. We don't know how he'll celebrate the occasion or what birthday gifts will be heading his way, but here you can enjoy "(The Gift of Sound) Where the Sun Never Goes Down," also from The Knee Plays:

Byrne will celebrate the gift of sound in a different way in downtown New York this summer. He'll be turning an entire building in lower Manhattan---the landmark Battery Maritime Building---into an interactive and, in his humble words, "very large musical instrument" called Playing the Building. (It's 9,000 square feet.) The exhibit opens on May 31 and runs through August 10; it will be free and open to the public on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays. On davidbyrne.com, David describes it this way:

Playing the Building is a sound installation in which the infrastructure, the physical plant of the building, is converted into a giant musical instrument. Devices are attached to the building structure---to the metal beams and pillars, the heating pipes, the water pipes---and are used to make these things produce sound. The activations are of three types: wind, vibration, striking. The devices do not produce sound themselves, but they cause the building elements to vibrate, resonate and oscillate so that the building itself becomes a very large musical instrument.

This exhibit (the photo at right is a mock-up) is presented by Creative Time, which has organized a number of unique, site-specific sound installations in the city, throughout its 30-year history, including 2002's Sonic Garden at the World Financial Center with David Byrne and Laurie Anderson.

For more information, visit davidbyrne.com. or creativetime.org/byrne.

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Click here to add The Knee Plays CD/DVD directly to your Shopping Cart for $16 and download the album MP3s at no extra charge.

Philip Glass Talks with Paul Simon at BAM for Conclusion of Simon Celebration

Tonight at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Paul Simon and Philip Glass come together at the BAM Harvey Theater for a conversation about art, life, and the creative process that will include questions from the audience as well. It is the culmination of Love in Hard Times: The Music of Paul Simon, BAM's monthlong celebration of the famed singer-songwriter that included David Byrne's unforgettable rendition of "You Can Call Me Al" and "I Know What I Know" for the April 9-13 events, Under African Skies. For tickets to tonight's BAMtalk, visit bam.org.

David Byrne, Black Keys, T Bone Burnett to Perform at Austin City Limits Festival

David Byrne, The Black Keys, and T Bone Burnett will be among the headliners at this year's Austin City Limits Festival, the event's organizers announced. The Festival, which runs September 26-28, in Austin's Zilker Park, will feature 130 bands, including Robert Plant and Alison Krauss (with whom Burnett is touring), Beck, Gnarls Barkley, Conor Oberst, Iron & Wine, Neko Case, Vampire Weekend, Gogol Bordello, and many others. For the complete list and further details, visit aclfestival.com.

New York Magazine Celebrates 40 Years of New York Culture

New York magazine is celebrating its 40th year with a special anniversary issue. In it, the magazine's culture critics give their take on the most essential New York works of art since the publication's inception, creating "The New York Canon: 1968-2008."

The classical music list, written by Justin Davidson, offers a wide range of artists and events, from Steve Reich's Drumming, which premiered at the Museum of Modern Art in 1971, to the John Adams-curated opening-week festival of Carnegie Hall's Zankel Hall in 2003. Among the other quintessential New York moments in between are Laurie Anderson's United States I-V, the epic, two-night event in 1983 from that "great American raconteuse"; the US premiere of Adams's The Death of Klinghoffer at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 1991, which, despite the surrounding controversy, "contained ravishing music"; and Audra McDonald's 1998 debut solo album, Way Back to Paradise, with music by emerging songwriters like Adam Guettel, and the "killer concert at Joe's Pub" that launched it.

Listen to Audra perform "The Allure of Silence" (Adam Guettel / Lindy Robbins) from Way Back to Paradise:

Included in the theater canon, according to New York magazine's Jeremy McCarter, is the arrival of Stephen Sondheim's Company in 1970, which "brought new complexity and darker shadows to Broadway" ("Even now," McCarter writes, "other songwriters are struggling to catch up."), and the 2005 revival of the composer's 1979 work Sweeney Todd.

On the pop music list, by Hugo Lindgren and Ben Williams, is Talking Heads' 1980 album Remain in Light, on which David Byrne and Brian Eno create a sound that would inspire for decades to come, and The Magnetic Fields 69 Love Songs, "a distinctly New York masterpiece."

To read the complete list from New York magazine, visit nymag.com.

David Byrne, Laurie Anderson Mark Iraq War Anniversary with Anti-War Benefit

Earlier this week, David Byrne, Laurie Anderson, and a number of other artists marked the fifth anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq with Speak UP!, a music, dance, spoken-word, and art event organized by Anderson and the singer Antony at Brooklyn's St. Ann's Warehouse to benefit the anti-war groups NYC United for Peace and Justice and Iraq Veterans Against the War.

Among the performance highlights, according to Rolling Stone magazine, was Byrne's two-song set, in which he, "armed with a four-person choir, led an art-gospel sermon full of huge choruses ... Byrne's mesmerizing presence kept his pair of originals spiraling heavenward."

MTV reports that the aforementioned choir comprised two members of Scissor Sisters, Damien Rice, and Norah Jones, whose own set included a rendition of Randy Newman's "I Think It's Going to Rain Today."

For photos from the event, visit brooklynvegan.com.

David Byrne, Laurie Anderson Participate in "Speak UP!" Benefit Tonight

Tonight at St. Ann's Warehouse in Brooklyn, Laurie Anderson and David Byrne will join a number of artists, including Antony, Blonde Redhead, Bill T. Jones, Norah Jones, Moby, Lou Reed, Damien Rice, and The Scissor Sisters, for Speak UP!, a sold-out benefit concert for peace in Iraq and justice at home. The event marks the fifth anniversary of the Iraq war, and will also include an exhibition of photos from Alive Day Memories, portraits of soldiers injured in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars by Timothy Greenfield-Sanders (including the photo at right, of John Jones). Emceeing the evening are actor Richard Belzer and Air America Radio host Laura Flanders. 

The concert will be preceded by Speak Out!, a free event beginning at 4 PM at the nearby powerHouse Arena. Featured speakers include Flanders, author Naomi Klein, and Donna Lieberman, head of the New York Civil Liberties; among other highlights will be the screening of footage from the documentary Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan.

For more information, visit stannswarehouse.org.

David Byrne Music Featured in Alvin Ailey Performance of Twyla Tharp Piece

The Alvin Ailey Dance Company is in Washington, DC, for a six-day residency at the Kennedy Center, with programs that include Twyla Tharp's The Golden Section, set to a score by David Byrne. The New Yorker has called the piece "dancing of astonishing beauty and power."

For Alvin Ailey's tour schedule with upcoming performances of The Golden Section planned for Southern California, Seattle, and Salt Lake City, visit alvinailey.org.

David Byrne's Nonesuch albums The Knee Plays and Grown Backwards are now available in the Nonesuch Store. With each CD purchase comes a free high-quality download of the album. Visit the Store for more information.

David Byrne and Laurie Anderson to Participate in "Speak UP!" Benefit Concert

Laurie Anderson and David Byrne will join a number of artists, including Antony, Blonde Redhead, Bill T. Jones, Norah Jones, Moby, Lou Reed, Damien Rice, and The Scissor Sisters, for Speak UP!, a benefit concert for peace in Iraq and justice at home. The event will be held at St. Ann's Warehouse in Brooklyn on March 18, marking the fifth anniversary of the Iraq war, and will also include an exhibition of photos from Alive Day Memories, portraits of soldiers injured in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars by Timothy Greenfield-Sanders.

For more information and tickets, on sale now, visit stannswarehouse.org.

David Byrne's Many Talents Featured in Wall Street Journal Profile

David Byrne has long been a fixture of the New York music and art world, from the early days of the Downtown scene in the '70s, and all along the way has expressed a broad range of interests in his work, through whichever medium he happens to be focusing his talents.

The Wall Street Journal's jazz and pop critic Martin Johnson spoke with David for a feature article about a recent spate of projects to come from the polymath, including his latest Nonesuch release, The Knee Plays featuring New Orleans brass-band music; an exhibit focusing on the art of the chair; and his event at New York's Town Hall examining the use of bikes in the city. Asked whether there's any underlying theme connecting these projects, David tells Johnson: "There probably are, but I'm not really aware of them."

To read the complete article, visit online.wsj.com.

David Byrne to Perform at BAM as Part of Paul Simon Celebration

David Byrne will join Hugh Masekela, Milton Nascimento, Luciana Souza and a number of other artists in celebrating the music of Paul Simon at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) this spring. Byrne will take the stage during the Under African Skies program, held April 9-13, as part of a monthlong BAM residency by Simon titled Love in Hard Times: The Music of Paul Simon. (The April 9 performance is also part of the BAM Spring Gala.) Other programs in the series feature performances by the Spanish Harlem Orchestra, Olu Dara, Grizzly Bear, and The Roches.

Tickets go on sale to the general public on February 11. For more information, visit bam.org.

David Byrne Looks to the Future of Music in Wired Magazine Article

In an in-depth article for Wired magazine, David Byrne examines the history of music, recorded and performed, and looks ahead, offering six possibilities for what the future might hold for creators, distributors, and consumers of music in its many forms. Included with the article are a number of audio clips from his conversations on the subject with Brian Eno, label execs, and artist managers.

In a separate article, Byrne and Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke chat about the interplay of business and art in music, with David ultimately paring down the issue to its essentials: "What is music, what does music do for people? What do people get from it? What's it for? That's the thing that's being exchanged." The interview contains audio clips of the pair's exchange and video of Radiohead performing songs off their digitally released and famously unpriced new album.

Both articles can be found at wired.com. To read David's article, click here; for the Yorke interview, click here.

Pitchfork: David Byrne's "Knee Plays" Stems from Perfect Pairing

In his review of David Byrne's The Knee Plays, Eric Harvey writes in  Pitchfork that the collaboration between Byrne and Robert Wilson from which the piece developed was an inspired pairing. "In many ways, a collaboration between Byrne and Wilson was perfect," Harvey writes. Bringing the material to CD for the first time, with previously unreleased bonus tracks, the Nonesuch reissue includes "a dense recollection of the pair's mind-meld by Byrne himself." And yet, even "extracted from its theatrical roots," says Harvey, "Byrne's score holds up remarkably well."

For The Knee Plays, Byrne chose to compose for New Orleans–style brass band, "a perfect fit for a play inspired by the Civil War," says Pitchfork, and "from the opening track, 'Tree (Today Is an Important Occasion)' to the quintessentially Byrnian spoken-word closer 'In the Future,' the music is variously light, dramatic, authoritative, and empathetic."

Read the complete review at pitchforkmedia.com. For more information and sound clips from the above tracks, visit kneeplays.com.

David Byrne's Journal on Caetano Veloso, the Future of News

David Byrne was on hand last week for Caetano Veloso's first show at the Nokia Theatre in New York, and he's written about the experience in his blog. In this excerpt, he describes how Caetano and his band allayed any concerns about the mix of styles in pairing the new songs in a set with the familiar older favorites:

... [T]he older stuff is generally sweeter than this new batch of songs, more often filled with turmoil and testiness. But this initial feeling of disquiet leads inevitably to captivation—even the cries of “I hate you” [the translation of the song "Odeio" off Caetano's new record, Cê] were somehow beautiful. They weren’t snarled as a punk or Emo band would do, but sung almost sweetly, and with a bewildered sadness that somehow those heavily charged words and feelings are bursting forth—the sadness of watching yourself say you hate someone.

Riding home on his bike after the show, David passed the brand-new home of the New York Times—a towering skyscraper designed by starchitect Renzo Piano—and took the occasion to muse on the state of journalism. The result is a fascinating essay pondering the future of news: who will report it, how it will be consumed, and how (or whether) it will be paid for.

You can read both entries at journal.davidbyrne.com.

David Byrne, Laurie Anderson in "New York Noise"

Paula Court, the photographer for the famed New York performance space The Kitchen, has released New York Noise, a new book of photos from the city's underground art scene during the economically down-and-out but culturally vibrant years of the '70s and '80s. Included in the book are photos of everyone from Madonna and Michael Stipe to Philip Glass, Laurie Anderson, and David Byrne. Also in the book are short essays by some of the artists whose portraits are featured inside, including Anderson and Byrne.

The Times (London) has put together a photo gallery along with a few of the texts from the book. Below are excerpts from David Byrne's note:

New York was a scary and legendary place—and downtown was like a Bohemian living museum, which was pretty thrilling for an aspiring artist and musician.

Legends walked the streets—well, from a skewed boho POV. It was all very new and exciting, at least for me—and it was incredibly funky, the sleaze and poverty were everywhere ... The cheapest hookers in town were on Chrystie Street, where Talking Heads once shared a loft. Now there’s a Whole Foods and luxury condos on the corner.

I’m not complaining or nostalgic for the bad old days—some things are genuinely better ... What might have gotten lost was that one could incubate one’s work inside the supportive bubble of a close and sometimes desperate community. Now that period of incubation is incredibly short, the chicks are thrown out of the nest immediately ...

And Laurie Anderson had this to say:

It was dark, dangerous, exciting. We knew we were creating a brand new art scene. We then watched that scene disappear. There weren’t boundaries or categories. We all worked on each other’s pieces and it didn’t matter that one was a dance-like thing and another was a sculpture-like thing.

At one point almost everyone I knew was working on an opera. You’d walk down the street and everyone you met would say, "How’s your opera?"

I guess opera was just a loose way to say big indefinable things. The definitions came later—applied, for example, by art schools to keep order in their curricula.

Read more and see some of Paula Court's photos from New York Noise: Art and Music from the New York Underground 1978-88 at timesonline.co.uk.

David Byrne Talks "Knee Plays" on BBC Radio's "Weekender"

David Byrne appeared on BBC Radio 2's The Weekender this past Friday to talk about the recent reissue of The Knee Plays and play a couple of tracks off the CD. Straightaway, the show's guest host, Jack Docherty, let David know how happy he was to have the album out on CD, not least because he could finally stop borrowing his dad's car just to hear the original version on the car's cassette player. There's much more about the piece and its origins in this lively discussion; the Scottish host even gets David to say a few words using his old Scottish accent. You can hear the segment at about an hour and a half in by clicking through the latest show at bbc.co.uk.

And Nicholas L. Hall's review of the CD in The Houston Press offers another reason to tune in. In it, he writes that "the world is richer" for the release of The Knee Plays. The album documents "Byrne at the height of his creative powers," says Hall, "in a constant struggle to define what is interesting, beautiful and ugly about the world." You can read the review at houstonpress.com.

For more on The Knee Plays, visit kneeplays.com.

Guardian Names 1,000 Must-Hear Albums (Part 1: A-M)

With iPods now holding up to 160 gigabytes of your favorite music, it might not be such a bad idea to start thinking of the 1,000 or so albums you just can't live without. Or, as the Guardian (UK) has put it, the 1,000 albums you must hear before you die. All this week, the Guardian is revealing, day by day, the records its music team thinks are must-hears "before you shuffle off your mortal coil."

Out so far on the list, released alphabetically by artist, are groups A through M. Here's some of what the Guardian's music mavens had to say about the Nonesuch albums they included:

• Amadou & Mariam: Dimanche à Bamako (2005) "This husband-and-wife rhythm and blues pairing from Mali were already huge in France before they added even more sparkle by hiring Manu Chao as producer. A sublimely paced record of pedal-to-the-metal acceleration and relaxed, freewheeling charm."

• Laurie Anderson: Big Science (1982, r. 2007) "Her dry humour, abrasive instrumentation and technological obsessions sound as current as ever: 'So hold me Mom, in your long arms. In your petrochemical arms. Your military arms. In your electronic arms.'"

• Buena Vista Social Club: Buena Vista Social Club (World Circuit/Nonesuch; 1997) "A bunch of elderly Cubans were unlikely candidates to displace Portishead as the dinner party soundtrack du jour but, with Ry Cooder's patronage ... the power and charm of its protagonists ensured theirs was a long-told tale ..."

• Brian Eno & David Byrne: My Life in the Bush of Ghosts (1981, r. 2006) "Underloved at the time but hugely cherished since, this album sees Byrne and Eno travel into the heart of darkness, their art-rock fuelled and flavoured by African percussion, Egyptian pop singers and samples of crabby radio DJs and a real-life exorcism. An experiment, but utterly absorbing nonetheless."

• Ali Farka Touré: Savane (World Circuit/Nonesuch; 2006) "Ali Farka Touré, who died in March 2006, was the finest and best-loved African guitarist of his generation. Often described as the godfather of the desert blues, he proved through his hypnotic instrumental work and singing that the blues must have originated from his home country of Mali ... He recorded a series of classic albums, ... but this album, released after his death, is arguably his finest. That's certainly the way he saw it ...  [On this album,] he produced some of the most compelling guitar work of his career ..."

• Ibrahim Ferrer: Buenos Hermanos (World Circuit/Nonesuch; 2003) "Backed by Ry Cooder's dream team—the jazz bassist Cachaito, the surf-rock guitarist Manuel Galbán and the Blind Boys of Alabama on backing vocals—Ferrer's effortlessly soulful voice has never sounded better: crooning the boleros, rolling his Rs on the salsas and making staggering vocal improvisations sound as casual as clearing his throat."

• Bill Frisell: Have a Little Faith (1993) "Jazz, folk, classical, pop—like a small-town electrical store, Frisell's landmark album has it all. Made with an unusual jazz quintet that includes Guy Klucevsek's accordion, it's a kind of love letter to American music, with John Hiatt's rolling title track and tunes by Copland, Ives, Foster, Rollins, Dylan and even Madonna."

• Kronos Quartet / Pat Metheny / Steve Reich: Different Trains / Electric Counterpoint (1990) "Different Trains, with its locomotive rhythms and melodies generated by the cadences of speech, is a meditation on Reich's wartime childhood and the fate of Jews in the Holocaust; it's the composer's most moving work."

• Orlando Cachaito López: Cachaito (World Circuit/Nonesuch; 2001) "Even though the Buena Vista Social Club franchise had thoroughly shaken up world music, nobody was quite ready for this sprawling, eclectic and slightly bonkers album from bassist Cachaito and producer Nick Gold, which mashes reggae, jazz, and French hip-hop with Cuba's finest."

Also on the list were Ry Cooder (Chicken Skin Music), k.d. lang (Ingénue), The Magnetic Fields (69 Love Songs), Brad Mehldau Trio (The Art of the Trio, Vol 4: Back at the Vanguard), and Pat Metheny (80/81).

For all the artists A through M, visit music.guardian.co.uk. Stay tuned for N through Z!

David Byrne and Youssou N'Dour, WNYC Soundcheck Picks of the Week

New York Public Radio station WNYC's Soundcheck staff have released their Picks of the Week. The show's executive producer, Gisele Regatao, points to Youssou N'Dour's Rokku Mi Rokka (Give and Take), and host John Schaefer names David Byrne's The Knee Plays among the "stand-out new albums" worth checking out now.

David Byrne Reveals the Power of Lists to BBC's Today

On this morning's edition of Today, BBC Radio 4's flagship news and current affairs program, David Byrne talked about the inspiration behind The Knee Plays. The piece was originally devised as part of an epic theater piece by director Robert Wilson in 1984 and has just now been released on CD by Nonesuch.

Here is what David told Today:

I could see connections between elements of traditional Asian theater and kind of experimental or avant-garde theater. And I thought, There's a lot of parallels there. There's more connections between traditional Asian theater and what these kind of theatrical innovators in New York and London and elsewhere were doing than there is between what they're doing and kind of traditional Western theater.

Looking at lists and instruction manuals and all the various texts that float around our lives, you can tell a lot about a people and a culture ... There's no obvious emotion in those texts, but buried in there are a lot of assumptions about life and what's important, but they're kind of buried under this cool surface ... and I thought wouldn't it be great to try and incorporate some of those kind of texts into song lyrics.

This was done during a period when Talking Heads was having some of their biggest pop hits, which is a little bit odd, but I thought, "I like this stuff too. I find that kind of innovative theater ... the things those people are doing are going to rub off on me, they're going to inspire me for live performances that I do. And they did. I learned a lot.

To hear the complete interview and clips from the record, visit bbc.co.uk for Today's "Listen Again" page. For more on The Knee Plays, visit kneeplays.com.

New David Byrne Interview on Bertolucci DVD Reissue

The Criterion Collection has announced that it will release a special four-disc set of the Bernardo Bertolucci masterpiece The Last Emperor on February 26, 2008. The film depicts the tumultuous life of Pu Yi, who came to power in 1908, at the age of three, and became China's last emperor. It garnered nine Academy Awards, winning each of the categories in which it was nominated, including Best Original Score, by Ryuichi Sakomoto, Cong Su, and David Byrne. Among the special-edition DVD's bonus features are audio commentary by Sakamoto and new video interviews with Sakamoto and Byrne.

You can learn more and pre-order the disc now at criterion.com.

David Byrne, Philip Glass in New Robert Wilson Documentary DVD

In this week's Bay Windows out of New England, arts writer Brian Jewell reviews the new DVD release of Absolute Wilson, the 2006 documentary about visionary theater director Robert Wilson—"a wonderful introduction to Wilson’s fascinating life and work ... and a must-see for theater buffs." Featured in the film are Wilson collaborators David Byrne and Philip Glass, each of whom worked with the director on his 1984 multi-act piece the CIVIL warS. Resulting from that project were Glass's music for its "Rome Section," A Tree Is Best Measured When It Is Down, and Byrne's Knee Plays, which Nonesuch reissued last week on CD. Glass also collaborated famously with Wilson on the 1976 opera Einstein on the Beach (Nonesuch, 1993), selections from which will be performed live for the first time in 15 years by the Philip Glass Ensemble at Carnegie Hall next month.

David Byrne Provides Cover Art for "Poetry" Magazine

As pitchforkmedia.com reports, David Byrne's artwork graces the cover of the November issue of Poetry magazine. The issue features works by Heather McHugh, Elfriede Jelinek, and, more unexpectedly, powerhouse vocalist Neko Case. The cover art is called "Chairs," 2004–2006. For a closer look at the cover and the magazine's contents, visit poetrymagazine.org.

David Byrne's "Knee Plays" Now Available

Seattle radio station KEXP has added to this week's list of featured new releases David Byrne's "In the Future" from the reissue of Knee Plays. The album—on CD for the first time—hit stores yesterday, complete with the original 13 tracks plus seven previously unavailable instrumental tracks. You can hear a clip of "In the Future" on KEXP.org or visit kneeplays.com to hear more from the album and check out site-exclusive bonus materials.

David Byrne Art Opening at DC Gallery

The washingtonpost.com's Going Out Gurus recommend the best spots in DC for taking in some art after the Smithsonian museums close for the night. The best bet for tomorrow night, November 3, is the opening of Furnishing the Self: Upholstering the Soul, featuring works by David Byrne in homage to the common chair. The multimedia exhibit includes "Macaroni," an embroidered piece on upholstery fabric, pictured at right, and runs through December 22 at the Hemphill Fine Arts gallery, 1515 14th Street NW, Washington, DC. The opening reception will be held Saturday, November 3, from 6:30 PM to 8:30 PM.

David Byrne and the Genius of Photography

Starting tonight, and running Thursdays through November 29, BBC Four will air a documentary series in the UK titled The Genius of Photography. In an essay on the BBC's website, Tim Kirby, the show's producer, tracks the evolution of photographs from snapshots into fine art. In an era when the "minutiae of daily life is the stuff of contemporary art," he writes, the camera is particularly well suited to capture the contemporary ethos.

The article begins with a quote on the subject from David Byrne: "The eye and brain edit things out," he says, "so you only see the things you're interested in. The camera sees what it wants to see, but it's not exactly what the eye wants to see. It's like having another eye that you hold in your hand, but it's an interesting, different kind of eye."

To read the essay, visit news.bbc.co.uk. Those in the UK can catch the broadcast Thursdays on BBC Four at 9 PM BST.

For photos by David Byrne, visit davidbyrne.com.

David Byrne Shares Stage with "Gyrating Geriatrics"

Earlier this month, David Byrne joined Young @ Heart Chorus, a group of "gyrating geriatrics" (according to Time magazine and the choir's own website), at their gig in New York City's Paris Bar. According to picthforkmedia.com, Byrne, by far the youngest person on stage (chorus members range in age from 72 to 88), joined in on the Talking Heads's "Heaven" and a new Byrne-penned tune, "One Fine Day."

David reports on his own blog that "the hipsters at the Paris Bar were completely won over, I think."

You can see more photos of the event by Mark Tusk like this one at Pitchfork:

All Songs Considered: David Byrne's "Knee Plays" A Thrill to Hear Again

In the October 18 episode of NPR's All Songs Considered, host Bob Boilen opens the show by recalling the first time he heard David Byrne's Knee Plays on cassette, back in 1985. He remembers driving around in his car listening to it—"I played it constantly"—until giving it away as a thank-you gift. He's been waiting 20-plus years for the CD release to replace the missing cassette, and, he says, "It's such a thrill to hear it again."

Learn more about the Knee Plays, from its earliest days as a collaboration with theater director Robert Wilson to the new CD version, at kneeplays.com.

Listen to the entire episode of All Songs Considered at npr.org.

David Byrne Adds Grass Art to The Seed Project

David Byrne will be among 140 artists contributing to The Seed Project, in which participants create works of art starting with a humble bag of grass seeds, in an effort to promote sustainability. The resulting works will be on display in New York City for five weeks, opening Thursday, October 25, at the Winkleman Gallery. Green gossip blog ecorazzi.com recently spoke with the David Cohen, the man behind the project, about the power of art and artists to affect change: "Artists create the world," Cohen tells the site. "If we all felt empowered, there's no telling what we could do." Read the complete interview here.

To learn more about The Seed Project and how to get involved, visit the project's site.