Address:
30 Lafayette Ave., Brooklyn
Fort Greene, NY 11217
Phone: 718-636-4100
Website: www.bam.org
Description: For nearly a decade, Leslie Feist did not stop moving. Her 2004 Juno award-winning album, Let It Die, led right into 2007's The Reminder, which earned her four Grammy nominations, six Junos, the Shortlist Music Prize, and the opportunity to teach Muppets to count on Sesame Street. She made her Saturday Night Live debut and toured the world. She covered an album with Beck, recorded with Wilco, and watched Stephen Colbert shimmy in a sequined "1234" jumpsuit, and made a documentary about her visual collaborators on The Reminder. And then, finally, after the seventh year, Feist rested.
When Feist was ready to make music again, she had very different ideas about how to shatter the quiet. She wrote the album over three autumn months in 2010 in a tiny garage behind her house, after a year away from the spotlight. While the lyrics she has crafted often have an affectingly melancholic undercurrent, the arrangements, in which Feist ups her reputation as a guitarist, unfailingly lift the ear out of melancholy and into inspiration. In January 2011, her longtime collaborators Chilly Gonzales and Mocky arrived in Toronto and arranged the 12 songs that would become her fourth studio album, Metals.
Metals' songs range from low rumbling and moody ambiences to brutal and intense, as if it were sonically mapping the fog rolling in and the resulting cracking of thunder. Ultimately, the aesthetic has a deliberate patience, elemental wildness, and natural beauty that echoes Feist's newfound observations on time. "I read a National Geographic article about soil and modern farming," she says. "The point is for food to grow, the point isn't for it to grow all at once and never grow again. Soil does its job, but unless you let it rest it can't regenerate its own minerals and do the same thing again. You just have to let it lay there under the sun, dry out, get rained on, and be still a little while." That she did. And now she's back.
Venue Description: Brooklyn Academy of Music is a nonprofit organization founded in 1861 whose mission is to be the preeminent progressive performing and cinema arts center of the 21st century. BAM is America's oldest continuously operating performing arts center. During its first century, BAM hosted political events, speeches, and rallies on the pressing issues of the day, featuring speakers like Susan B. Anthony, Sojourner Truth, Langston Hughes, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Amelia Earhart. Currently, BAM presents or produces up to 220 stage performances each year, and has a four-screen cinema, open 365 days a year, presenting new and art-house releases. BAM has an in-house restaurant and bar and a café which features up to 75 free performances annually. BAM Education serves up to 24,000 students and 200 New York City schools a year. BAM's archive, which includes thousands of photos, posters, and playbills, is a rich resource for historians, students, and art aficionados.
Situated in the heart of Downtown Brooklyn, BAM's Peter Jay Sharp Building is located at 30 Lafayette Ave. and the BAM Harvey Theater is at 651 Fulton St. All BAM performances are accessible to those who use wheelchairs. BAM theaters and public spaces are available for rental by commercial and nonprofit groups, as well as community organizations and individuals.
For more information or to purchase tickets to an event, visit bam.org.
Upcoming Events at Brooklyn Academy of Music:
