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Fun, bold and unpredictable, Whitney Live showcases an eclectic variety of cutting-edge performers.
Whitney Live is free with Museum admission, which is pay-what-you-wish on Fridays from 6-9 pm. Seating is on a first-come, first-served basis. Reservations are not accepted. All shows start at 7 pm.
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Artist-in-Residence: Colin Gee
Artist-in-Residence: Colin Gee
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Colin Gee returns to the Whitney as the founding Whitney Live artist-in-residence in an unprecedented performance-based residency project scheduled to unfold over the course of the next year. Whitney Live will present works in progress and “first peek” versions of several upcoming performances live onsite (dates to be announced soon) and digitally on the Whitney Live Artist-in-Residence blog. This dedicated “Studio Page” will feature elements from new and ongoing work in the form of narrative, musical, and video documentation. Visit colingee.wordpress.com for more information. |
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Four Friday Evening Concerts in July presented as part of Dan Graham: Beyond Free with museum admission. Seating is first-come, first-served. No reservations.
Titus Andronicus are from Glen Rock, New Jersey, and take their name from the Shakespearean tragedy. Their sound is punk-infused Replacements-esque pop music with screaming vocals, layered guitars, and songs about suburban malaise. Real Estate, led by singer/guitarist Martin Courtney, also has roots in the Garden State. Their songs evoke visions of tract housing, basement band practice, and wasted youth, mixing languid psychedelia, muted vocals, and a boomy undertow of drums.
July 17 at 7 pm Part of the LA scene centered around The Smell, Abe Vigoda emerges from a shared background of punk, no wave, and pop. Alternating from melodic and tropical to hardnosed and heavy, Abe Vigoda's sound is equal parts Beefheart and My Bloody Valentine with a haunting pulse and a DIY attitude all its own. Grooms are Travis Johnson, Emily Ambruso, and Gabriel Wurzel, three friends who play a structurally mutilated brand of noise-pop featuring blissful interplay, sonic experimentation, and song destruction. Recordings have showcased sounds from broken noise-surf to campfire-seance drone. Grooms (formerly The Muggabears) continue to craft songs filled with beauty, gloom, and irony-free whimsy.
July 24 at 7 pm Woods is a Brooklyn-based psych-rock band known for upbeat folk jams awash in odd studio effects, cracked fuzz, and unique vocalizations. Members Jeremy Earl, Jarvis Taveniere, and G. Lucas Crane use an idiosyncratic songwriting style to create road worn, windblown, and deeply grooved soundscapes. Hailing from Austin, Texas, the trio YellowFever play minimal art pop that dips into waters that Young Marble Giants, Stereolab, and 80s Rough Trade bands also explored. Formed in the summer of 2006, YellowFever's pedigree includes shared members with the band Voxtrot and tour dates alongside Thee Oh Sees, Ponytail, Ecstatic Sunshine, and HEALTH.
July 31 at 7 pm Although the Vivian Girls have only been a band for a short while, their charms have already worked magic on the road to “out of nowhere” status. Mixing 60’s girl-group sounds, punk, and shoegaze, Vivian Girls -- Ali Koehler (drums), Kickball Katy (bass) and Cassie Ramone (guitar, lead vocals) -- make gritty, lo-fi, aggressively fun pop tunes. These Are Powers are a Brooklyn- and Chicago-based trio featuring Anna Barie (vocals, electronics), Pat Noecker (prepared bass, vocals), and Bill Salas (electroacoustic drums, vocals). Pummeling their way through live performances, These Are Powers use club beats, found sounds, pulses, and blips, to create a chaotic collage of vibrations.
Photo Credit: These Are Powers, photography by Maxyme G. Delisle |
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Composers' Showcase 2009 February 6 February 13 February 20 March 6 Photo Credit: Nadia Sirota, Viola, with Nico Muhly. Composers' Showcase January 19, 2007. Stephanie Berger © 2007 Funding for Whitney Live is provided by the Amphion Foundation, The Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust, The Helen Keeler Burke Charitable Trust, and Whitney Live Producers. |
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Meredith Monk Music @ the Whitney The Whitney Museum of American Art presents Meredith Monk Music @ the Whitney, a one-day-only performance marathon featuring highlights from 43 years of work by the eminent composer, singer, and multi-disciplinary artist. Admission to the event is free with paid Museum Admission. No reservations, no reserved seating, no special ticketing. Photo Credit: Meredith Monk. © Massimo Agus. Courtesy The House Foundation Funding for Whitney Live is provided by the Amphion Foundation, The Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust, The Helen Keeler Burke Charitable Trust, and Whitney Live Producers. |
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Whitney Museum: Meredith Monk Music Brochure
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Objective Suspense Colin Gee, a former principal clown with Cirque de Soleil, creates a series of intimate performance experiences inspired by Alexander Calder’s innovative ideas of movement and love of the circus. With Calder’s Circus nearby, Gee manipulates abstract forms in several short acts that focus on the dynamics of movement. Engaging exhibition visitors one or two at a time, and using eye contact, rhythm, play, and stillness, Gee re-orients perceptions of the circus itself. Though no one but the artist could animate Calder’s Circus—an early example of performance art—Gee’s surprise interventions, using figures of his own devising, charge the atmosphere of the gallery with parallel senses of suspense and animation. Please note: Gee’s appearances are unannounced and will occur on select days during regular Museum hours. Colin Gee trained as an actor at the Jacques Lecoq School in Paris and the Dell’Arte School of Physical Theatre. His works have premiered at the Fringe Festival, PS 122, and Dance Theater Workshop, among others. Photo Credit: Colin Gee by Ethan Levitas
Video by Paula Court and Pierce Jackson |
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Whitney Live and the Black Rock Coalition present: In conjunction with William Eggleston: Democratic Camera, Photographs and Video, 1961-2008, Whitney Live presents the Black Rock Coalition on Friday evenings in November. The BRC launches its residency on November 7 with "Memphis Remixed: Experiments with Color Negatives," a re-imagining of seminal musical works drawn from the Hi Records and Stax Records catalogs. Each following Friday features stylized tributes to key figures from the Memphis music scene, a movement significant to Eggleston’s artistic evolution and the Black experience in the post-Civil Rights Era. November 7 November 14 November 21 November 28 The Black Rock Coalition is a non-profit, member-supported organization founded to facilitate the development, exposure, and acceptance of Black alternative music and its creators. Founded in 1985 by guitarist Vernon Reid, journalist Greg Tate and producer Konda Mason, the BRC is a collective of artists, writers, producers, publicists, activists and music fans assembled to maximize exposure and provide resources for Black artists who defy convention. To date, the BRC is the only national nonprofit organization dedicated to the complete creative freedom of Black artists. In The News Songs of the South: The BRC ponders the dark heart of Dixie, The Village Voice
Presented by
Photo Credit: Untitled, 1983, from William Eggleston's Graceland, 1983-84 Dye transfer print 20 x 24 (50.8 x 61) Collection of Marcia Dunn and Jonathan Sobel © Eggleston Artistic Trust |
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June 27 Times New Viking is a Columbus, Ohio-based trio who play punk-infused indie-rock with messy boy-girl vocals and a lo-fi sound. ACME performs Jefferson Friedman's third string quartet which juxtaposes aggressive post-punk influences with delicate harmonic and melodic textures.
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June 20 Legendary glitch-hop maven Scott Herren, best known as Prefuse 73, boasts a beat-centric, genre-splicing style. ACME performs Chen Yi's Sound of Five and Kevin Volans’s She Who Sleeps.
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June 13 Philadelphia brother/sisters combo A Sunny Day in Glasgow adds lush female vocals to dance-worthy rhythms, making surreal, dreamy pop music. ACME performs Ingram Marshall's Entrada and John Adams's Shaker Loops.
Top photo: A Sunny Day in Glasgow. |
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June 6 Franco-American duo The Berg Sans Nipple are Lori Sean Berg and Shane Aspegren. Weaving electronica, layers of feedback, and pop melodies, they create a cohesive, beautifully bizarre collage. ACME performs selections from Kevin Volans's White Man Sleeps and John Adams's Book of Alleged Dances.
Top photo: The Berg Sans Nipple.Bottom photo: ACME members, L-R, Gilad Harel, clarinet; Clarice Jensen, cello and artistic director; Eric Huebner, piano; Miranda Cuckson, violin; Chris Thompson, percussion; Alex Sopp, flute; Nadia Sirota, viola; Caleb Burhans, violin |
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May 23 Launch of Brannon's album the last page in a very long novel, 2008, recorded live at night in the Park Avenue Armory during the course of the Biennial programming. Proceeds from album sales will benefit the Women’s Shelter at Park Avenue Armory. Following the launch, the Lucky Dragons host a dance show set to a soundtrack of autotuned singing voices. Top photo: Matthew Brannon, Bad Manners, 2008. Letterpress print on paper, 22 x 16 in. (55.9 x 40.6 cm). Collection of the artist; courtesy Friedrich Petzel Gallery, New York, and David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles. Bottom photo: Lucky Dragons, Desert Walkers, 2006- . Performance, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, October 21, 2006 . Photograph by Claire Evans. |
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April 18 A live set that takes Olive's Vinyl Scores (original compositions on vinyl intended to be interpreted by other turntablists) and Rosenfeld's 'custom dub plates' (original compositions and sonic elements on one-off acetate records) as the generative basis for a collaborative, improvised sonic environment. Top photo: DJ Olive. Performance, Flynn Center for the Performing Arts, Burlington, Vermont, March 18, 2007. Courtesy Oxingale Records. Photograph by Jaimé Campbell Morton. Bottom photo: Marina Rosenfeld. Rehearsal for Teenage Lontano, 2008. Drill Hall, Park Avenue Armory, New York, February 2008.
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April 4 Photo: Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black. Performance, 2008 Whitney Biennial at Park Avenue Armory, March 14, 2008. Photograph by James Ewing.
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February 29 Artist, inventor, and composer Tristan Perich holds degrees in music, |
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February 22 This performance features a collaboration between the genre-bending ensembles So Percussion and Kneebody. Effortlessly blending the improvisational skill of jazz with the swagger of hip hop and the conviction of rock, Kneebody has created a cohesive voice that is at once singular and familiar. Their organic, postmodern instrumental music imparts "an epic, trans-generational gravity," as one L.A. critic wrote. Kneebody's members are Adam Benjamin, Shane Endsley, Kaveh Rastegar, Ben Wendel, and Nate Wood. So Percussion creates new visual and aural experiences by pulling percussion instruments out of their usual contexts. The group’s educational initiatives have resulted in residencies with composition departments at Princeton, Harvard, and Columbia University, and their collaborations include a project with the electronica duo Matmos (a portion of which was presented as part of Whitney Live in May 2006). Recently, they’ve been featured at Carnegie Hall, the Bang on a Can Marathon and on WNYC’s New Sounds and Soundcheck. So Percussion’s members are Josh Quillen, Adam Sliwinski, Jason Treuting, and Lawson White. |
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February 15 Composer, guitarist, and computer programmer Nick Didkovsky joins the furious energy of rock with intricate composition. His unique fingerprint is his non-didactic approach to combining human and machine creativity, pushing the boundaries of rock, algorithmic composition, and contemporary classical systems. In this performance, Didkovsky presents a portrait of his ongoing work in collaboration with ensembles including Sirius String Quartet, Bone, and Doctor Nerve. Nick Didkovsky, 2007. Photograph Courtesy of Scott Friedlander. |
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February 8 A high-energy electro-acoustic composer, Dan Deacon performs with Casio keyboard, computer, vocoder, signal generator, and other devices to process his voice and compositions. Influenced by Devo, Talking Heads and Scratch Orchestra, among others, his music takes experimental composition and electronic music off of the esoteric intellectual shelf, making it less formal and more fun. Check out Pictures from the show: http://www.brooklynvegan.com/archives/2008/02/dan_deacon_the.html Dan Deacon, 2006. |
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Praise for Whitney Live
"What Was Added, and What was Taken Away" - Jennifer Dunning, The New York Times Dance Review
Funding for Whitney Live is provided by the Whitney Live Producers.
Photograph of Tristan Perich by Amani Willett, 2007.
