JD Samson and I were thrilled to have 7 Sounds featured as the opening night performance at IDFA’s new media program, do {not} touch. The show was streamed simultaneously by listeners all over the world. Looking ahead to 2021, we’ll be pushing the piece forward in exciting new ways, and will have some exciting news to share very soon.

I filmed recently with the great avant-garde composer Annea Lockwood for my new documentary on sound. Annea was recording the Hudson River with a hydrophone. She’s a hero of mine, so it was a huge pleasure. I’m looking forward to featuring her and her work!

I did a live-streamed short piece called 7 Sounds for the Headlands Center for the Arts with my great collaborator JD Samson. It’s hard to know what to call things at this point – was it a radio documentary? A sound walk? A live podcast? Who knows? In any event, it was a 20-minute mostly audio piece about sound. People were encouraged to sit outside on a park bench or a rooftop or in a backyard to experience it. It was a sketch using materials for the longer live cinema piece I’m working on called 32 Sounds. This shorter work was streamed live (it doesn’t exist in anything but that ephemeral form) and included sounds and thoughts from Annea Lockwood, David Harrington, Christine Sun Kim, Mazen Kerbaj, and a few others. It was super fruitful and also quite fun to put together. Sound is a great and endlessly interesting muse for me. Stay tuned for updates on the project.

The Kronos Quartet and I are doing some final shows of A Thousand Thoughts in 2019. We’ll be screening the piece outdoors in Big Sur at Phillip Glass’ Days and Nights Festival and then on to Australia for two screenings at the Melbourne Festival. We have a bunch more shows in 2020: Dallas, Santa Fe, Berkeley, Seattle and many other cities. More info here.

It’s been a busy fall, touring with both A Thousand Thoughts and The Love Song of R. Buckminster Fuller. The Kronos Quartet, Yo La Tengo and I have done screenings in Las Vegas, San Diego, Bannf, and more to come: Big Sur, Duke, Melbourne Australia. At the same time, I’ve been able to sneak in a few shoots related to some new and exciting projects. It’s been a busy and good time around here at the Free History Project, which in case you don’t know is the nonprofit we set up many years ago when making The Weather Underground and is still the org that produces and owns the copyright to all my work.

I am deep in the editing of a new live cinema piece that will premiere on Aug. 2nd at the Whitney Biennial in NYC. The piece is called Don’t Call Me Gay Zelig and is a 30-minute live cinema portrait of Jim Fouratt. JD Samson will be performing a live soundtrack! Jim Fouratt is a fascinating and controversial person whom I’ve known for many years. More info about him here.

Kronos Quartet and I will be doing a show of A Thousand Thoughts next week at one of the world’s great theaters––Bellas Artes in Mexico City!!! I’m incredibly excited about it. Tuesday June 11th – please come if you are anywhere nearby.

I’ll be doing an event at the International Documentary Association in LA on May 8th. I’ll be in conversation with Kim Yutani, the head of programming at Sundance. I’ll be showing clips and Kim and I will be gabbing about this. I’ll also screen an old live cinema piece about Louis Armstrong and the hundreds of tape recordings he made of himself hanging out with friends over the years. Hope to see you there.