0.10 Appendix 1: musician biographies

Anderson, laurie (b. 1947)

Born in Chicago, performance artist Laurie Anderson studied both art and the violin until age 16 when she decided to stop playing the instrument in order to focus on art and literature. Her passion for reading and art led her to Barnard College where she studied art history. After graduation she studied with Carl Andre and Sol LeWitt at the School of Visual Arts and completed an M.F.A. in sculpture from Columbia University in 1972. Music became a part of Anderson’s work in her 1973 performance Automotive (a concert for “nice cars in harmony”) and she returned to the violin (although in an unconventional way) in 1975 when she invented the tape bow violin by replacing the violin strings with a tape recorder playback head and the bow hair with a prerecorded piece of magnetic tape. Sound was produced as she dragged the magnetic tape bow back and forth over the playback head.

Anderson achieved popular success in 1981, and a recording contract with Warner Brothers Records, when her song O Superman (from Part 2 of her seven hour theater piece United States) was released as a single and climbed to number 2 on the British pop charts. An unlikely popular hit with a duration of over eight minutes, it is a typical Anderson composition in that it tells a story interjected with clichés (Pay as you go), slogans (Neither snow nor rain nor gloom of night…), and humorous asides (Hi Mom!). A political work, Anderson wrote the piece as a reaction to Iran-Contra, but it took on new meaning for her when she sang the lines “Here come the planes. They’re American planes. Made in America.” at Town Hall in New York City on September 19, 2001, ten days after the destruction of the World Trade Center.

Armstrong, louis (1901–1971)

Cornetist, trumpeter, singer, and entertainer. An early nickname was “Dipper” (or “Dippermouth”) and somewhat later (and more famously) “Satchelmouth” or “Satchmo,” both references not just to physical characteristics but to the hugeness of his sound. Armstrong was one of the most important figures in the history of jazz. He was born in perhaps the worst slum of New Orleans, but surrounded from an early age by the rich and varied musical culture of that unique city. As a youngster he sang as part of a vocal quartet, and his first instrument was reportedly a tin horn given him by a Jewish family he worked for.

After being arrested in 1912 for firing a pistol on New Year’s Eve, he was sent to the Home for Colored Waifs, where he began playing the cornet and had his first musical training. During his later teen years, Armstrong began playing with trombonist Kid Ory’s Jazz Band, and in 1922 moved to Chicago where he joined the band of King Oliver, with whom he played second cornet. In 1924 he traveled to New York to play with Fletcher Henderson’s band, a stint that had a startling impact on the large-ensemble jazz played in that city. In 1925, back in Chicago, he began a series of recordings under his own name that would become classics of early jazz (“Hotter Than That,” “West End Blues,” “Weather Bird,” and many others). By the end of the Twenties he had emerged as perhaps the greatest trumpeter in jazz, and is largely credited for jazz’s evolution from a collective style to a soloist’s art. In 1929 he moved to New York, and in the next decade became an international superstar.