Best known as a founding member of the pioneering rock band Talking Heads, David Byrne is one of music’s most iconoclastic heroes, as well as a major contributor to visual, cinematic, and literary culture. Throughout his music career, Byrne’s idiosyncratic tastes and talents have tapped into punk, pop, foreign and digital domains. And alongside his groundbreaking music, Byrne has contributed uniquely thought-provoking work as an author, filmmaker, conservationist, bicycle advocate, and urban designer. His forthcoming book, How Music Matters, is a fascinating survey of contemporary music and culture with an historical perspective. Drawing on his own experiences with Talking Heads, Brian Eno, and his myriad collaborators, Byrne writes elegantly about the power of music to transform and liberate and offers astute analysis of how the industry has changed. The reader can hear the fresh voice of David Byrne the performer and follow the thinking of Byrne the artist, composer and public intellectual.
Bernie Krause first came to public attention when he replaced Pete Seeger in The Weavers during the group’s final year, but it is his ground-breaking work with the synthesizer that most profoundly effected the music industry. Alongside his passion for electronic music, Krause has found inspiration in the sounds of nature. In 1968/1969, he and musical partner Paul Beaver were the first to incorporate natural soundscapes into pop/orchestral music on their album In A Wild Sanctuary. Since then, Krause has become a “sonic ecologist” recording over 15,000 species. He is the author of The Great Animal Orchestra: Finding the Origins of Music in the World’s Wild Places.
Please note new 7:30pm start time.