Carnegie Music Hall
October 17
8 p.m.
Pittsburgh is poised to become the first public audience to view never before seen films by famed artist and native son, Andy Warhol.
If you enjoyed The Warhol‘s recent internationally touring sensation, 13 Most Beautiful…Songs for Andy Warhol’s Screen Tests, which featured a selection of the artist’s four-minute silent film portraits accompanied by original soundtracks composed by Dean Wareham and Britta Phillips, then you definitely don’t want to miss the museum’s latest special project debuting this weekend.
On Friday, October 17th, The Warhol will present the world premiere of Exposed: Songs for Unseen Warhol Films, spearheaded in partnership with two additional powerhouse cultural venues—Brooklyn Academy of Music and UCLA’s Center for the Art of Performance.
Marking the 20th anniversary of the North Side museum, the unique creative endeavor pairs established and emerging musicians—several with deep ties to NYC and Warhol’s legacy—with 15 short films made by the King of Pop during the 1960s. Recently restored by MPC/Technicolor, the 16mm films star a variety of legendary artists, writers and musicians, Warhol collaborators and Factory fixtures, such as Edie Sedgwick, Marcel Duchamp, Allen Ginsberg, Nico, Donovan, Jack Kerouac, Marisol, Pierre Antoine Muraccioli, International Velvet, Robert Indiana, Taylor Mead, Jack Smith, Mary Woronov and more.
Composing original soundtracks for the rare films are five songwriters who embody the “generational trajectory and musical influence from post-Velvet Underground 1970s through today.” Serving as guest music curator for the project is acclaimed guitarist, songwriter and vocalist Dean Wareham, who hand-selected the impressive lineup of participating musicians and is also a featured performer along with them. Performing their newly commissioned soundtracks live on Friday will be: Tom Verlaine (Television), Martin Rev (Suicide), Dean Wareham (Galaxie 500, Luna, Dean & Britta), Eleanor Friedberger (Fiery Furnaces) and Bradford Cox (Deerhunter, Atlas Sound).
Wareham, who worked closely with The Warhol on its like-minded 13 Most Beautiful project—which premiered at the Byham Theater in 2008 and went on to tour venues around the globe—is an especially fitting choice for guiding the soundtrack to the museum’s newest multimedia initiative. As frontman for the bands Galaxie 500 and Luna during the 1980s and 1990s, Wareham’s own music underscores the link between the minimalist pop legacy of The Velvet Underground, the new wave and post-punk scenes of the 1970s and 1980s in NYC, and countless bands of today who continue to cite him as an influence.
Featured films in Exposed, which Warhol made between 1963 and 1966, were selected by staff from The Andy Warhol Museum, including Ben Harrison, curator of performing arts, Geralyn Huxley, curator of film and video and Greg Pierce, assistant curator of film and video, who all worked in consultation with Wareham. The films were stored for many years at MoMA’s Celeste Bartos Film Preservation Center, and in 2012, they were selected for the project and then restored and digitized.
Following its world premiere at Carnegie Music Hall, Exposed will open on the West Coast at UCLA on October 24th, and on the East Coast debut at Brooklyn Academy of Music on November 6th. Providing production design for the show is Pittsburgh-based studio, Clear Story.
