David Byrne to Bring Together High School Color Guard, St. Vincent + More
David Byrne has been known to dabble in some random projects. From musicals to bicycles, we always wonder what he'll get into next -- and now it looks like he's taking us back to high school.
In conjunction with the Brooklyn Academy of Music and Barclays Center, the Talking Heads frontman is bring us 'Contemporary Color,' a special production featuring a number of our favorite artists including St. Vincent, Devonté Hynes, How to Dress Well, Kelis, Nelly Furtado, tUnE-yArDs and Nico Muhly and Ira Glass with 10 of the country's best color guard teams to perform on the Barclays stage.
If you're not sure what that is, a color guard "uses props like flags, rifles, and sabers, along with movement and dynamic music, to express a conceptual motif."
So how did Byrne get involved with color guard? In 2008, he lent music to a high school team for their color guard competition piece. Being the curious person that he is, he looked into it more and requested that he see how the team would use his tunes. After watching the Winter Guard International’s World Championship, he said, “I was stunned at what I was seeing, and being a musician I naturally wondered to myself: What if these performances had really great live music? Wouldn’t that lift it to another level?”
And 'Contemporary Color' was born.
The event will take place on June 22-23 at the Air Canada Center in Toronto followed by the June 27-28 performance at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn. Ticket prices for the Brooklyn show start at $25 and will be available on Jan. 21 for those who are 'Friends of BAM,' while the rest of us can grab our tickets on Jan. 28 via Ticketmaster and the BAM website.
Watch the trailer for the event below: