Whitney Live
Fun, bold, and unpredictable, the Whitney Live performance series showcases an eclectic variety of cutting-edge artists. Performances represent new trends, reinterpret American traditions, and resonate with the Whitney’s exhibitions and permanent collection. Whitney Live is free with Museum admission.
Whitney Live: High Places and Toro Y Moi
Whitney Live rocks this July and August with upstarts in experimental pop, tropicalia, chill-wave, beach music, garage rock, post-punk, and globe-trotting bass-inflected DJ beats.
High Places:
High Places began as an experiment in collaboration. Robert Barber grew up listening to punk and hardcore, and Mary Pearson studied bassoon performance, but both gravitated toward a DIY compositional style and a love of layers. High Places’ songs contain a range of aural layers: bells and bird calls over a wash of ocean waves; mallets hitting mixing bowls over treated guitar and glockenspiel; Mary’s reflective vocals over Rob’s homemade beats. The result is a spacious amalgamation of sounds with a unique, almost Caribbean undertone.
Toro Y Moi:
Toro Y Moi is 23-year-old Columbia, SC native Chaz Bundick. After earning a BFA in Graphic Design at The University of South Carolina, Chaz created Toro y Moi as a bedroom project that then expanded into the live performance realm. Toro’s songs are fuzzed-out, dreamy R&B slow jams that bear elements of his parents’ vinyl and tape collection as well as contemporary influences like freak folk, noise, hip hop, and French house music.
Free with Museum admission, which is pay-what-you-wish on Fridays from 6–9 pm; there are no special tickets or reservations.
Whitney Live: Bear Hands and Darlings
Whitney Live rocks this July and August with upstarts in experimental pop, tropicalia, chill-wave, beach music, garage rock, post-punk, and globe-trotting bass-inflected DJ beats.
Bear Hands:
In August 2006, Dylan Rau (vocals/guitar) brought together Wesleyan schoolmates Ted Feldman (guitar), Val Loper (bass) and TJ Orscher (drums) to form Bear Hands. They find ways to use driving beats, contemplative lyrics, and inventive guitar lines to create danceable indie rock. After SXSW this year they embarked on an exhaustive touring schedule and are finally home in NYC this summer. During their many gigs on the East Coast, Bear Hands have shared the stage with bands like MGMT, Vampire Weekend, and Ra Ra Riot.
Darlings:
Darlings has a rather typical-sounding story: a band started by four friends in the front room of a fifth-floor walkup on Bleecker Street in New York City. With singer/guitarist Peter Rynsky, drummer Matt Solomon, bassist Joe Tirabassi, and guitarist/singer Maura Lynch, the group has perfected a cross-pollination of the past five decades of rock while still managing to conjure a sound that is very current and very much their own.
Free with Museum admission, which is pay-what-you-wish on Fridays from 6–9 pm; there are no special tickets or reservations.
Whitney Live: Javelin and Warpaint
Whitney Live rocks this July and August with upstarts in experimental pop, tropicalia, chill-wave, beach music, garage rock, post-punk, and globe-trotting bass-inflected DJ beats.
Javelin:
Musical omnivores and darlings of David Byrne’s Luaka Bop label, Javelin uses colorfully painted boomboxes that form large speaker totems (“boombaatas”) which can hang from the ceiling or stack up on the floor like pyramids for their performances. Sounds range from broken dance jams to relaxed instrumental cut-ups, featuring long forgotten samples, chopped and re-assembled with drums, wooden recorders, old keyboards, handmade thumb pianos or whatever instruments are readily at hand. Javelin is George Langford, Tom Van Buskirk, and friends.
Warpaint:
Warpaint is Emily Kokal (vocals/guitar), Theresa Wayman (guitar/vocals), Jenny Lee Lindberg (bass/vocals), and Stella Mozgawa (drums), an all-girl quartet from Los Angeles. They weave intricate guitar lines, hypnotic vocals, and driving post-punk rhythms into songs that skirt the line between psychedelia and intimacy. Playing to many captivated audiences, Warpaint has opened for Yeasayer, Black Heart Procession, and The Slits.
Free with Museum admission, which is pay-what-you-wish on Fridays from 6–9 pm; there are no special tickets or reservations.
Whitney Live: DJ/rupture and Tanlines
Whitney Live rocks this July and August with upstarts in experimental pop, tropicalia, chill-wave, beach music, garage rock, post-punk, and globe-trotting bass-inflected DJ beats.
DJ/rupture:
DJ/rupture (nee Jace Clayton) is a turntablist who has performed live in over 30 countries, bringing with him his signature mix of beats both party-rocking and suggestive of complex political undertones. Rupture spends time cultivating an audience for his border-crossing style as a much-loved DJ on NYC-area radio station WFMU 91.1 FM, as well as on his blog at negrophonic.com. His last album, Uproot, was one of the 10 Best Albums of 2008 by Pitchfork.
Tanlines:
Tanlines is Jesse Cohen and Eric Emm, Brooklyn-based pop experimenters who make textured yet danceable music jams. Their ever-listenable palette of sounds includes R&B synths, wistful wordless vocals, sega beeps, keyboard riffs, and polyrhythmic drum beats.
Free with Museum admission, which is pay-what-you-wish on Fridays from 6–9 pm; there are no special tickets or reservations.
