A&E

Landry plays at the Guggenheim

by Dominick Cross

Dickie Landry took time away from his pecan trees in Cecilia and tended to some other cultural diversions like soloing recently on saxophone in the "reverberant rotunda of the Guggenheim Museum," as related in a Wall Street Journal story Sunday.

Landry' March 26 concert at the Guggenheim featured the echo-intensive music from a 1977 album, "Fifteen Saxophones" that just came out on CD.

Landry lived in NYC from 1969 to 1981 doing stuff a little different than what we usually see and hear in Lafayette. Although there was a performance in the mid-90s in a former art gallery on Jefferson Street where Landry, in pioneering the use of a quadraphonic delay system which allowed him to form a live quintet of his own music (his original sound plus four timed delayed repeats), took place.

Many locals know Landry as a multi-media artist and as the saxman with Lil Band o' Gold, and who sits in with True Man Posse, Bas Clas, Steve Riley & the Mamou Playboys and also sat in with Frigg A Go Go, Beau Jocque and the Zydeco High Rollers, Cowboy Stew, and many others, is the subject in the WSJ's story headlined, A Gadabout's Homecoming - Artist and Musician Dickie Landry is Back in New York with Unusual Shows.

Landry's early years in NYC is also being celebrated in the city, according to the WSJ with the opening of "Dickie Landry: Heart," an exhibition at Salomon Contemporary in Chelsea, where his hypnotic video piece, "1, 2, 3, 4." Made in 1969, the work involves footage of hands drumming on foam and clapping beneath a strobe light.

In 1987, Landry's "Mass for Pentecost Sunday," a commission from the Menil Foundation for the inaugural opening of the Menil Collection, premiered at the Rothko Chapel in Houston.

In addition to Landry's solo career, he has collaborated with other composers, artists and choreographers.

But it was in NYC where Landry's experimental side came forward as he was a founding member of the Philip Glass Ensemble in 1969. He's also collaborated with Laurie Anderson and played on Paul Simon's "Graceland" and Talking Heads on the "Speaking in Tongues" album.