Lou Reed's Berlin - A Sydney Festival Event
 

Thursday, 18 January 2007 at 20:00

Lou Reed’s Berlin is a project that brings to life an album which is at once deeply influential and chronically misunderstood. Recorded in 1973, Berlin was the visionary, follow-up ‘concept album’ to his popular hit record, Transformer. Although Berlin became a cult favourite and was reissued, Reed has never performed the album live.

Sydney Festival and Arts at St. Ann’s (New York) have joined forces to present a theatrically realized concert version of Reed’s stylized rock paean to life outside the circle. From Beerhalle staccato to the embers of a final ‘Sad Song’, its orchestrations are filled with the lyrics of the broken hearted and willfully disabled… the drifting tormented addicts of love formalizing their own downfalls in the outskirts of the divided city.
Berlin features the legendary Lou Reed on vocals, accompanied by a band made up of his long-time collaborators. The live score will be augmented by a 20-piece chore of young voices led by none other than Antony of Antony and The Johnsons. Musical direction will be shared by Bob Ezrin, who produced the album in 1973 among other seminal recordings including The Wall, and Hal Willner, the producer behind the 2005 Sydney Festival spectacular Came So Far for Beauty.
The concert will be directed and designed by 1980’s New York art-scene phenomenon and film-maker Julian Schnabel (Basquiat, Before Night Falls).

Lou Reed will be playing at the State Theatre. Here's a link for the article & for ticket info.

It seems Lou will perform the same material in Wroclaw (Poland) on 13th March.

Skill. Absolutely no chance of my going, but that is my favourite Reed album.

Fuuuck that is ace! no way i can get there but still brilliant, guess i'll have to hang out for the overpriced and underwhelming dvd release.

I was just reading about that.....anything by Julian Schnabel is good in my book.

yeah, he's pretty interesting, his paintings seem to me to be really wierd and I really go back and forth on whether i like them or not but its for sure he's super nutsy to just do so much different stuff, all of it pretty polarising and easy to pick holes in, and just get on with it.

I'm going to make a special trip to the gramercy park hotel when i get to ny at christmas just to take a look at what he's done there.

Did anyone watch this? I've been listening to Berlin too much the last few days. One of better albums by anyone, for any reason.