Lou Reed: The Art of the Straight Line: My Tai Chi

A celebration of Lou Reed’s life, music, and meditations in the Winter Garden

We invite you to celebrate the upcoming release of The Art of the Straight Line: My Tai Chi, a collection of unpublished writings by the late musician Lou Reed on the technique, practice, and purpose of martial arts, as well as essays, observations, and riffs on meditation and life.

The celebration falls on Lou Reed’s 81st birthday and the fourth annual Lou Reed International Tai Chi Day. Join us for a Tai Chi demonstration, a public Tai Chi class, and presentation by the book editors. The event will culminate with a performance of musical improvisors set against Lou Reed’s Musical Drones.

SCHEDULE:

5:00 PM | Lou Reed’s Musical Drones performed by Stewart Hurwood

5:30 PM | Tai Chi demonstration by Master Ren Guang Yi and students with Stephan Berwick MC

6:00 PM | Free Tai Chi class with Master Ren Guang Yi

6:30 PM | The Art of the Straight Line discussion with book editors, Laurie Anderson, Stephan Berwick, Bob Currie and Scott Richman

6:45 PM | Lou Reed’s Musical Drones resume

8:00 PM | Guest performances by Kevin Hearn, Sarth Calhoun, Shahzad Ismaily, Laurie Anderson and others.

The Art of the Straight Line Celebration is presented by Laurie Anderson, Stephan Berwick, Bob Currie, Scott Richman, HarperCollins Publishers and Arts Brookfield for Brookfield Place New York.

LOU REED was a musician, singer, songwriter, poet and founding member of the legendary rock band the Velvet Underground. He collaborated with many artists, from Andy Warhol to Robert Wilson and Metallica. Reed had a groundbreaking solo career that spanned five decades until his death in 2013.

LAURIE ANDERSON is a writer, director, composer, visual artist, musician and vocalist who has created groundbreaking works that span the worlds of art, theater, experimental music, and technology.

In 2021 she served as Charles Eliot Norton Professor of Poetry at Harvard University and delivered the Norton lectures as video, now available online. She has worked on numerous projects in AI with the Machine Learning Institute in Adelaide, Australia where she was artist in residence in 2020. Anderson continues to tour her evolving performance The Art of Falling and is working on an opera, ARK, commissioned by the Manchester International Festival, premiering in 2024.