“Rock & roll to me is everything…I see it as a way of life, as a sort of an intellectual liberalism of being in the world.” —Thurston Moore
He cofounded Sonic Youth, altering the course of rock-and-roll by transforming punk, drone, electronic, free jazz, and art rock into thought experiments and spiritual epiphanies. During this celebration, exclusive to the Walker, Thurston Moore curates two distinct evenings of music reflecting his expansive past and current influences. In collaboration with Nels Cline, Anne Waldman, Eva Prinz, Daniel Carter, Ambrose Bye, Devin Waldman, Brian Gibson, crys cole, Steve Shelley, and James Sedwards, Moore revives art-rock mash-ups and reveals rock-and-roll as inner bliss.
Moore and all of the national collaborators will perform in various configurations at the Walker’s McGuire Theater on both Friday, November 9 at 8pm and Saturday, November 10 at 8pm. Tickets for the show will be $30 ($24 for Walker Members). For more information, call the box office at 612.375.7600 or visit online at walkerart.org/tickets.
Local poets/artists are also part of the weekend performances: Sun Yung Shin (Saturday), Dameun Strange (Friday), and Danez Smith (Friday).
ABOUT THURSTON MOORE
Thurston Moore (b. 1958) is an American musician best known as singer, songwriter and guitarist for the experimental rock band Sonic Youth (1981–2011). In 2004, Moore was listed as Rolling Stone’s “100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time”. Now living in London, Moore has started a new band called Chelsea Light Moving—releasing its debut self-titled album in 2013. Moore has been here before, as Sonic Youth headlined Rock the Garden in 2000 and its band members have visited the Walker a few times in the years following.
Moore moved to New York City in 1976, co-founding Sonic Youth in 1980. Sonic Youth’s album Daydream Nation was chosen by the U.S. Library of Congress for historical preservation in the National Recording Registry in 2006. He has collaborated with Yoko Ono, John Zorn, Faust, and Gleen Branca among others. Alongside his various works in music, he is also involved with publishing and poetry. Moore teaches writing at Naropa University, a school in Colorado founded by Allen Ginsberg and Anne Waldman in 1974 and music at The Rhythmic Music Conservatory in Copenhagen.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Daniel Carter (b. 1945) is a jazz saxophone, flute, clarinet, and trumpet player based in New York City. He is a member of several jazz groups such as TEST, Other Dimensions in Music, and Ghost Moth. Carter has performed alongside artists such as William Parker. DJ Logic, Thurston Moore, Yo La Tengo, and Anne Waldman among others.
Acclaimed poet Anne Waldman is internationally known as an experimental poet, teacher, writer and performer. Waldman has performed in numerous venues such as the Dodge Literary Festival in the U.S. and the Jaipur Literature Festival in India, and she continues to teach poetics all over the world. She has raised the bar as a feminist, activist and powerful performer.
Eva Prinz
Eva Prinz is an artist and poet based in London working with film and sound art. Her films have been shown at Tate Modern in London and at Silent Green Kulturquartier in Berlin. Over the last eighteen years, Prinz has served as a Senior Editor and Publisher of books on the subjects of art, architecture, photography, erotica and music for Taschen, Rizzoli, Abrams and her imprint founded in 2009: Ecstatic Peace Library. She is currently curating an exhibition at Whitechapel Gallery and a film series at Close-Up Cinema in London. Prinz has most recently announced the Daydream Library Series a record label to release release opera, sound healing and punk music by women.
Ambrose Bye
Son of Anne Waldman, Edwin Ambrose Bye is a jazz musician and composer. He performs frequently with Anne Waldman. The two have created multiple albums together. Bye co-founded the New York City label Fast Speaking Music, featuring jazz, the literary and performance art with Anne Waldman and cousin Devin Waldman.
Devin Brahja Waldman is a saxophonist, drummer, synthesizer player and composer based in New York. Waldman has performed and recorded with Patti Smith, Malcolm Mooney, William Parker, Thurston Moore, Godspeed! Nadah El Shazly, and Lydia Lunch among others. Waldman has collaborated with his aunt, poet Anne Waldman, since the age of ten. Waldman is also a co-producer for Fast Speaking Music, a label which has released the works of Amiri Baraka, Meredith Monk, Eileen Myles, CAConrad, and Joanne Kyger among others.
Guitar explorer Nels Cline is best known as the lead guitarist in the band Wilco. His recording and performing career—spanning jazz, rock, punk and experimental—is in its fourth decade, with over 200 recordings. Cline has received many accolades including Rolling Stone anointing him as both one of 20 “new guitar gods” and one of the top 100 guitarists of all time
Brian Gibson
Musician Brian Gibson is based in Rhode Island. He is known as the bassist for the band Lightning Bolt and Wizardzz. Along with his musical accomplishments, he also co-founded the game development company Drool, where he created the art and music for the video game Thumper. He previously worked as lead artist for video game company Harmonix from 2001 until 2015.
crys cole is a Canadian sound artist working in composition, performance and sound installation. Generating subtle and imperfect sounds through haptic gestures and seemingly mundane materials, she creates textural works that continuously retune the ear.
Sun Yung Shin was born in Seoul, Korea, during Park Chung-hee’s military dictatorship, and grew up in the Chicago area. She is the editor of the best-selling anthology A Good Time for the Truth: Race in Minnesota, author of poetry collections Unbearable Splendor, finalist for the 2017 PEN USA Literary Award for Poetry, and winner of the 2016 Minnesota Book Award for poetry. She lives in Minneapolis where she co-directs the community organization Poetry Asylum with poet Su Hwang.
Dameun Maurice Strange is a sound artist, multi-instrumentalist, and composer whose conceptual chamber works and choral pieces are focused on stories of the African diaspora. He uses West African polyrhythms, classical music forms, contemporary jazz harmonic explorations, along with found sounds and historic recordings to create modern afrofuturist performances that disrupt the notion of genre and what Black music is and can be.
Danez Smith is a Black, queer, poz writer & performer from St. Paul, MN. Danez is the author of Don’t Call Us Dead (Graywolf Press, 2017), a finalist for the National Book Award, and [insert] boy (YesYes Books, 2014), winner of the Kate Tufts Discovery Award & the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry. Danez is also the author of two chapbooks, hands on your knees (2013, Penmanship Books) and black movie (2015, Button Poetry), winner of the Button Poetry Prize. Danez’s work has been featured widely including in Buzzfeed, The New York Times, PBS NewsHour, Best American Poetry, Poetry Magazine, and on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.
James Sedwards
James Sedwards is an English guitarist, musician and composer, working predominantly in the field of alternative rock. Initially known for leading his own band Nought (or “Nøught”), he has more recently been known as a collaborative musician on projects including the Thurston Moore Band, Guapo, The Devil (with members of Country Teasers), Kish Mauve, Alex Ward & The Dead Ends, Zodiac Youth (with Youth and Zodiac Mindwarp), and Chrome Hoof as well as ongoing improvisation duo work with drummer Jem Doulton.
Steve Shelley
Steve Shelley is best known as the drummer of Sonic Youth.
He currently records and tours with Thurston Moore, Sun Kil Moon, Emma Tricca, Spectre Folk and Riviera Gaz and Gata Pyramide (both based in Sao Paulo, Brazil). In the recent past he has recorded and/or toured with Yasmine Hamdan, Hallogallo 2010 (with Neu’s Michael Rother), Disappears, and J.P. Shilo.
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