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Hurricane Sandy, between the end of October and the beginning of November 2012, was one of the most catastrophic events of this decade. Barack Obama declared a state of "severe disaster". At least 253 people in seven countries lost their lives and the considerable losses, damages, and service disruptions amounted to an estimated over 65 million dollars. On the eve of the presidential elections, the topic of climate change (considered as one of the causes of the event) has since been at the center of political debate and considered as an issue to be addressed jointly with international cooperation. The lack of agreement with Donald Trump and Putin's Russia's denial clearly constitutes on the issue of
international policies a sort of declaration of war, with consequences that can only be dire for all parties involved. The publication of "Landfall" (Nonesuch) is therefore surely timely in expressing what constitutes a true and proper urgency: a series of thirty electroacoustic songs composed by Laurie Anderson, arranged by the legendary Kronos Quartet of David Harrington (violin), John Sherba (violin), Hank Dutt (viola), and Sunny Yang (cello), narrate the nightmares of the artist born in Chicago, Illinois, and the tragedy of 2012 in a true neo-classical opera.
Laurie Anderson is perhaps primarily known to the general public for being the wife of a gigantic figure like Lou Reed from 2008 until the day of his death in 2013. Lou Reed's greater popularity has surely not overshadowed or halted Laurie’s artistic activity, who, mainly a violinist (but holding a degree in sculpture from Columbia University in New York), is universally recognized as one of the most important and influential performance artists and avant-garde neo-classical composers since the early eighties.
In "Landfall" (performed for the first time live in 2015), all her experiences find a place, summed up in a work of intense and dramatic character that among recent productions I would liken for similarity to "The Ship" by Brian Eno or "Midnight Colours" by Irisarri, having as its premise that fear of something that appears too big and irreparable to us, which constitutes a peculiar aspect of human sensitivity. Yet, unlike the aforementioned cases, at the end of this surely complex and elegiac work, certainly also "ambient", it seems almost to feel something reassuring that we can recognize only in that profound humanity and collective expression of human warmth: a sort of message but also an invitation not to take everything for lost.
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