Paris 1919 in Malmö 2011/21/11 - photo: Olle Enqvist/ROCKFOT0The Brooklyn Academy of Music (BMA) has posted detailed information about the three John Cale shows at the Next Wave festival in New York:
When Past & Future Collide
Paris 1919 New York Premiere
Music by John Cale
Performed by the Wordless Music Orchestra
Life Along the Borderline: A Tribute to Nico US Premiere
Curated by John Cale
BAM Howard Gilman Opera House (30 Lafayette Ave)
Jan 16 at 8pm (Life Along the Borderline: A Tribute to Nico)
Jan 18 & 19 at 8pm (Paris 1919)
Tickets: $20, 40, 65 (Jan 16 & 18); $20, 40, 60, 80 (Jan 19)
(subject to change after Aug 26)
In a unique three-night Next Wave Festival engagement featuring two productions, John Cale returns to BAM to perform the seminal work Paris 1919, and present a curated evening in celebration of Velvet Underground vocalist Nico.
Cale’s 1973 album, Paris 1919, is an orchestral art-pop landmark—one of the most beautiful recordings of his long and wide-ranging career. Inspired by the Treaty of Versailles, Paris 1919 has been cited as Cale’s most personal work, a meditation on loss and introspective yearning. Cale and his band are joined by the 20-piece Wordless Music Orchestra—under conductor Jeffrey Milarsky— and will perform the record in its entirety, followed by additional music from Cale’s repertoire on January 18 and 19. Of Cale’s 2010 performance of the album at UCLA’s Royce Hall, the Los Angeles Times said, “…he brought the album home in a tender, seemingly heartfelt performance that demonstrated how interested in melody this veteran noisemaker remains.”
Life along the Borderline: A Tribute to Nico is a one-night-only, multi-artist celebration of the legendary ate singer, Andy Warhol protégé, and actress whose recording debut was the classic 1967 album TheVelvet Underground & Nico. In addition to Cale’s work with Nico and the Velvet Underground, he contributed to her 1967 solo debut, Chelsea Girl, provided arrangements for 1969’s Marble Index, and produced several of her 70s solo records, Desertshore and The End, as well as 1985’s Camera Obscura. Artists participating in Life Along the Borderline will soon be announced. Welsh violist, pianist, composer, and singer John Cale’s singular career began in contemporary classical music, where he was mentored by Aaron Copland and worked with John Cage and minimalists Terry Riley and La Monte Young in the 60s. He co-founded the influential band Velvet Underground along with Lou Reed. In addition to his recordings with the Velvet Underground, Cale has released numerous solo albums, including his most recent EP, Extra Playful (2011). Cale has produced seminal recordings including the Stooges 1969 debut, Patti Smith Band’s Horses (1975), Squeeze’s 1978 debut, and albums by Happy Mondays, Alejandro Escovedo, Siouxsie & the Banshees, Jesus Lizard, Modern Lovers, and Medaevel Baebes, among many others. He has also written scores for films including American Psycho and Basquiat, and his cover of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” was featured in the film Shrek. Cale was named an officer of the Order of the British Empire in 2010, and created an audio/video installation for the Wales Pavilion at the 2010 Venice Biennale of Art. Never one to be satisfied with the status quo, Cale is riding a wave of experimentalism with a re-mix project featuring collaborations with a new breed of electronic artists including Actress, Maria Minerva, and Tim Hecker as a precursor to his forthcoming full-length studio album. Cale appeared at BAM’s 1989 Next Wave Festival in Songs for Drella—A Fiction. For more information, visit john-cale.com
The Wordless Music Orchestra is the house band of New York City's Wordless Music series, which was founded by non-musician Ronen Givony in 2006 and has since presented dozens of concerts in churches, museums, nightclubs, and out of doors, pairing artists from the worlds of classical, electronic, and rock music. Comprising some of New York's most omnivorous young musicians and members of groups such as Ensemble Signal, Alarm Will Sound, ACME, and Bang on a Can, the orchestra presented its first concerts in January 2008 under conductor Brad Lubman with the US premiere of composer and Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood's Popcorn Superhet Receiver. In 2009, they performed the New York premiere of Arvo Pärt's Symphony No. 4 (Los Angeles) under conductor Jeffrey Milarsky, and appeared in 2010 as part of Lincoln Center's White Light Festival with world premiere compositions for orchestra and voices by Kjartan Sveinsson and Jónsi Birgisson of Sigur Rós with his partner, Alex Somers—again under the baton of Jeffrey Milarsky. Wordless Music Orchestra’s recent projects include a unique collaboration with visual artist Dominique Gonzalez- Foerster for Gavin Bryars' The Sinking of the Titanic (performed at the Guggenheim Museum rotunda in 2011) and a mini-tour with Tyondai Braxton—to Alice Tully Hall, the Library of Congress in Washington, DC, and Walker Art Center in Minneapolis—to perform new works and world premiere arrangements from Braxton's Central Market in addition to music by John Adams, Louis Andriessen, and composer/conductor Caleb Burhans. For further information, please visit wordlessmusic.org
Cale’s 1973 album, Paris 1919, is an orchestral art-pop landmark—one of the most beautiful
recordings of his long and wide-ranging career. Inspired by the Treaty of Versailles, Paris 1919 has
been cited as Cale’s most personal work, a meditation on loss and introspective yearning. Cale and
his band are joined by the 20-piece Wordless Music Orchestra—under conductor Jeffrey Milarsky—
and will perform the record in its entirety, followed by additional music from Cale’s repertoire on
January 18 and 19. Of Cale’s 2010 performance of the album at UCLA’s Royce Hall, the Los Angeles
Times said, “…he brought the album home in a tender, seemingly heartfelt performance that
demonstrated how interested in melody this veteran noisemaker remains.”
