Laurie Anderson and Fred Frith at Miner Auditorium, December 2, 2018

SFJAZZ presents Scenes from My Radio Play featuring Laurie Anderson and Fred Frith
Robert M. Miner Auditorium
SFJAZZ Center, 205 Franklin St, San Francisco, CA 94102 USA
7:00 PM, Sunday, December 2, 2018

Back to the previous event! ☸ Up to the 2018 yearbox! ☸ Up to the 2018 event list! ☸ On to the next event!

[7:n PM lights down, announcements, band out]

1. [7:01 PM] (No Mind improvisation)
2. [7:10 PM] (Terence the Small Spotted Dog) … Mind Journey
3. [7:19 PM] (Blind Cow Restaurant)
4. [7:24 PM] (Train Trip; Hawaii; water sounds, new backdrop, bird noises)
5. [7:32 PM] (My only joke: wait wait, the children died)
6. [7:34 PM] (water noises resume with splash screen backdrop; shrunken head; J.K. smile)
7. [7:44 PM] (Phone bots; germy doctor ties)
8. [7:50 PM] (Letter to Trump; stoning a puppy; back to the middle of the mind's eye)
   [Pause; Laurie comments: “Thanks for staying with us so far”]
9. [7:59 PM] (Red backdrop)
10. [8:08 PM] (Hamsters > film making; green/blue backdrop)
11. [8:10 PM] (Dogen stories)
12. [8:18 PM] (Green River rafting trip story); squonky noise to wrap things up
    [show ends 8:24 PM bow, then both off; back out to wave after a minute, but no Encore, dang! 8:26 PM done]

• Laurie Anderson: violin, keyboard, electronics, vox;
• Fred Frith: guitar, effects.

Without any sort of reference or explanation for the title of tonight's show, Scenes from My Radio Play, it's hard to wrap tonight's event in any sort of coherent message: it was like being in someone else's dream for awhile. Very cool, if you're not one for trying to make much sense out of anything beyond the moment! And if anything above seems to be nonsense, it could have something to do with the fact that I was writing in the dark, so tonight's notes aren't all that legible!

Andrew Gilbert posted a nice article about the whole SFJAZZ run for the Mercury News, which ?helpfully? explains that tonight's gig is a “stripped down duo version” of a more elaborate work being staged at the end of February, 2019, in Hamburg. Bet that will be a cool show too!

Roberto Friedman attended all five of Laurie's residency events (what a trooper!), and posted a comprehensive review with the Bay Area Reporter. And to top it off, he tacked on a coda bit summarizing his thoughts on the Dec 5 Riley/Cheng concert. What a mensch!

Back to the previous event! ☸ Up to the 2018 yearbox! ☸ Up to the 2018 event list! ☸ On to the next event!