If you’ve ever seen Andrew Bird in concert, you probably noticed those weird conical horns that look like the unfortunate offspring of an old record player and a giraffe. Well this August, New York fans can see those stage speakers up close with their creator and Mr. Bird himself at the Guggenheim Museum.
Billed as “Andrew Bird & Ian Schneller’s Sonic Arboretum, a site-specific performance involving violin, looped passages, and a landscape of horn speakers,” this unique event is part of a Guggenheim’s “Dark Sounds” concert series. The world-renowned museum brings three indie acts to the rotunda, allowing fans a chance to see these bands in a very unusual setting. On July 15th Beirut brings their brand of world-folk to the gallery while September 3rd the Cinematic Orchestra turns the hallowed halls into an electro-jazz club.
The Guggenheim event site has the info (via Brooklyn Vegan). The concerts tie in with the museum’s ongoing “Haunted: Contemporary Photography/Video/Performance.” The site writes that “the series takes its thematic cue from the conceptual threads that weave through Haunted, aiming to evoke the exhibition’s elements of melancholy, ghostliness, the uncanny, and our collective and individual obsession with accessing the past.” Umm, yeah, what they said.
In March the museum hosted a similar event with Animal Collective, but from all accounts that was less of a concert than a ‘60s-style “happening.” These shows promise to actually be enjoyable.
Tickets for the Beirut show go on sale to museum members ($25) at noon today and to non-members ($30) on Friday, June 25th at the Guggenheim website. The other shows will go on sale at a later date. Tickets for the Andrew Bird show go on sale June 28th for members / June 29th for non-members and tickets for Cinematic Orchestra go on sale July 13th for members and July 14th for non-members. Do note people can already purchase tickets for all three shows through the Dark Sounds membership package.
Dark Sounds Dates
07/15 – Beirut
08/05 – Andrew Bird and Ian Schneller
09/03 – Cinematic Orchestra