This just in—David Byrne’s new project is a color guard. No joke.
As the artist informed his fans this morning, some years back, a color guard team approached the artist about using some music he’d written for theatre piece in their routine.
His response—“Fine, no charge… you are a high school team after all,” asking that the team send through some sort of documenting of the finished product down the line. When they did, he “watched, and was amazed and delighted to find myself in a new world that I didn’t know existed.”
He continues:
“Over recent decades, the teams have evolved into something strange and wonderful; they’ve created a vibrant, innovative and original vernacular artform that is wildly popular across the whole North American continent, but is all but unknown in many of the big urban centers—like New York, where I live. Contemporary Color aims to remedy that situation.”
You can read his full announcement for more, but, the take away for you—David Byrne’s doing color guard-based performance accompanied by him and the likes of Nelly Furtado, Kelis, St Vincent, How To Dress Well, Devonté Hynes, Nico Mulhy and Ira Glass, tUnE-yArDs, and who knows what other awesome artists.
The only performances announced so far are June 22 + 23 at the Air Canada Centre in Toronto and at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center on June 27 +28. Click the link to the original message from Byrne above for pre-sale codes.
Tickets for the Brooklyn show went on sale today and were still available at the time of writing.
And get ready for what I can only assume will be a rising trend of color guard-based popular entertainment.
Can’t wait for their version of Pitch Perfect.
