David Byrne Plays Building

nik.mercer — Sat, 31 May 2008 09:56:42 -0700

David Byrne has always been a curious and ever-evolving musician. Even back in his days of fronting Talking Heads, a relatively straightforward post-punk/art-rock group, he sought out ways to expand and elaborate the band's sound (Talking Heads were the first to pull world musics as influences, for example―eat it, Vampire Weekend). Byrne's transition into middle-age has made him no less ambitious, though; from penning his own books to scoring T.V. shows, interviewing Thom Yorke (who named his band after a 1986 Talking Heads tune, "Radio Head") to releasing his own solo works, the guy's become only more prolific in recent years.

This Summer marks the debut of one of his most outrageous―and certainly most colossal―sonic experiments: turning "Great Hall of the Battery Maritime Building, a 99-year-old former ferry terminal at the end of Whitehall Street that has sat mostly dormant for more than a half-century" into a "cast-iron orchestra," controlled by an eerie pump organ and "played" by whoever has an interest in trying the thing out.

Read the whole New York Times article!

Great concept:

Because he generally likes to distance his art from his music, Mr. Byrne has not composed pieces for the building-organ and does not plan to play it publicly. But he said he hoped the project would say something about the direction of popular music.

“I’m not suggesting people abandon musical instruments and start playing their cars and apartments, but I do think the reign of music as a commodity made only by professionals might be winding down,” he said in a discussion about the piece with Anne Pasternak, the project’s curator and Creative Time’s president. “The imminent demise of the large record companies as gatekeepers of the world’s popular music is a good thing, for the most part.”

The music that will soon be heard from the maritime building’s infrastructure and the organ, with assistance from a stream of visitors over the summer, is essentially “authorless,” but “strongly directed,” he said.