EVENT INFO:
DAVID J & COMRADES AND VANGELINE AT PERFORMA BIENNAL 2019
Date/Time: NOVEMBER 24, 2019 / 8PM
Venue: ELSEWHERE - 599 Johnson Ave #1, Brooklyn, NY 11237
Tickets: http://performa19.org/tickets/david-j
davidjonline.com • performa-arts.orgDavid J, founding member of highly influential post-punk band BAUHAUS and 90’s alt rock supernova, LOVE & ROCKETS, will perform with special guests on November 24, 2019 as part of the Performa 19 Grand Finale.
For this special Performa tribute celebrating the 100 year centennial of the Bauhaus School of Art + Design, David will enlist new and past comrades he has performed with.
David describes the tribute:
“I was delighted to be approached by PERFORMA with the idea of creating a new performance piece in celebration of the Centennial of the original Weimar Bauhaus in New York City in November of this year.
For this performance, I will be collaborating with the world renowned Butoh artist, Vangeline. A new hour long piece of music has been composed specially for the occasion. It is a deep and darkly hypnotic soundscape made in collaboration with Curse Mackey (Pigface), Rona Rougeheart (SINE) and renowned violinist, Heather Paauwe. We shall also be utilizing a randomized selection of samples of the voice of the late René Halkett, a former member of the original Staatliches Bauhaus school (1923-1925) and with whom I recorded two tracks back in 1981. ‘Nothing’ and ‘Armour’ were released as a 7” single on the 4AD label and in 2001 were re- released alongside an additional track, ‘The New God’ as part of a 20th anniversary limited edition CD. As well as being a poet, painter and dancer, René was also a radio broadcaster with the BBC and was known for his sonorous radio voice, hence the title of the piece. I am sure that he will be with us in spirit! “
In addition, the performers have teamed with Raj Patel of multi-disciplinary design house Arup to develop the spatial audio, lighting, projection and immersive performance environment. His other design collaborations include the design of the reverberation for Bjork’s Cornucopia tour, musician Nick Cave’s immersive audio book for The Death of Bunny Munro, and the reworking into spatial audio and live performance of Scott Walker’s final solo album as “Ambisymphonic” (the latter two of his collaborations with the artists Iain Forsythe and Jane Pollard).
This event will mark David J’s first New York City performance hot off the heels of the most recent announcement that Bauhaus, the band, will reunite for a two-night sold-out series at the famed Hollywood Palladium on November 3rd and 4th just weeks before this New York City event.
Rona Rougeheart and Curse Mackey are notable for their participation at a recent Peter Murphy show in Orlando, FL. Murphy was too ill to perform, so in order to give the audience something unlike anything else, David J quickly enlisted Rougeheart and Mackey to join him and the rest of Murphy’s band in an impromptu eight-song set of Bauhaus classics performed in a spontaneous, unrehearsed, “deconstructed in dub” live remix approach with Rougeheart joining on synths and percussion and Mackey providing lead vocals in lieu of Murphy. This set was so well-received that upon David J receiving the invite from the PERFORMA curators that he immediately invited Rougeheart and Mackey to perform with him. In addition, the trio spent a week in Austin, TX at COMA L Studio where they have recorded 11 new tracks for a soon to be made official project for release in 2020.
Credits
Organized by Raj Patel.
David J - Bass guitar
Heather Paauwe - Electric violin
Rona Rougeheart - Electronic percussion, synths, sampling (image projections), vocals
Curse Mackey - Programming, synths, sampling, vocals
Vangeline - Butoh performance
Raj Patel, Joseph Digerness, Brendan Smith, Leonard Roussel, Alex Mayo, Devin Bean, Joe Chapman - Spatial Audio, Lighting, Sound, Projection, Interactive Design and Programming
Vangeline costume design by Julie Shea with special thanks to Anohni