Laurie Anderson brings experimental music show to St. Paul

Experimental musician Laurie Anderson probably won't decide what's she's going to do in her new show "The Language of the Future," coming to St. Paul on Saturday, until she sees the inside of the Fitzgerald Theater.

"Sometimes you can put things together that really seemingly shouldn't be," Anderson said. "But suddenly they illuminate each other together. So I depend on that kind of almost chance juxtaposition sometimes."

Anderson, reached by phone at her New York office, said her show is a work in progress.

"I am sort of working on it as I go along," she said. "And adding things and subtracting them, so I'm not sure which blend of these pieces I'll be using."

Anderson had questions about the Fitz, which she hadn't seen yet, looking for things to build into the show.

"Tell me about the space? What is the vibe there, if you had to describe it?" she asked.

She likes the idea of an older theater, and one named for F. Scott Fitzgerald. She enjoys his writing and particularly his thoughts about dealing with opposites.

"That's one of my favorite things he said, 'Try to imagine you are holding two opposites, one in each hand, and they are equally true but totally opposite. Try to hold on to both of those things without going totally crazy and you'll be able to be a writer,'" she laughs.

Anderson comes with an iron-clad reputation for her ability to improvise. She's invented new instruments over the years and delights in new technology. For this tour she's been building what she calls her "rig."

"It's a combination of keyboards and software and violin and vocal processors and pedals and imagery as well," she says. "And it is almost like being able to improvise with those elements."

Now in her late 60s, Anderson trained as a sculptor, but launched a career as a performance artist in the 1960s. She has collaborated with the likes of William Burroughs, Andy Kaufman, and Spaulding Gray. She began dating Lou Reed in 1992 and was married to him from 2008 until his death in 2013.

She believes there is a great interest in experimental music today. There's new technology, new ways of distribution and a fundamentally different economic model.

"So suddenly you don't have to stay within those boundaries, the commercial boundaries, because no-one buys music," she laughs. "So I think it frees people to make things that aren't necessarily at all commercial."

When Anderson last played in the Twin Cities four years ago, she told the audience the piece she was doing then, "Dirt Day," was all about the elections. When reminded of that it got her thinking about this weekend's performance.

"We'll see what happens in the next few days as I am pondering this thing."