Moondog Madrigal

An Exciting Event

Music and puppetry collaborative An Exciting Event interweaves the late composer Louis "Moondog" Hardin's catchy and complex madrigal rounds with their own dazzling menagerie of musical instruments, rhyming couplets, and rowdy crew of recycled-garbage puppets to tell a story of love, education, and a Giant Earthworm.

The premiere performance of this full-length work occurred in May 2009 at the San Francisco Community Music Center. A performance of the Moondog Madrigal Mini-Puppet Show Teaser was presented at the NYC Moondog Rising Festival in November 2007.

An Exciting Event is a band of composer-performers who come together from across the United States to create, explore and celebrate music and puppetry, employing overlooked materials such as glass bottles, plastic milk jugs, and yard waste; vintage forms such as rounds, iambic couplets, themes and variations; and unconventional systems of tuning, rhythm and communication. Learn more about this group and their projects at www.anexcitingevent.org.

American composer, musician, poet, and instrument inventor Moondog was born Louis Hardin in Marysville, Kansas, in 1916. Blind from age 16, he lived for about twenty years (between the late 1940's and mid 1970's) on the streets of Manhattan, dressed in Viking garb and known as "The Viking of 6th Avenue." He composed his upbeat, melodic, contrapuntal, and rhythmically intricate music in Braille, and recorded a series of albums during the 1950's and 1960's for the Prestige and Columbia record labels. His sold and performed his music in the street, along with his whimsical, philosophical rhymed couplets. He lived the last 25 years of his life in Germany, where he wrote and recorded a vast amount of music, much of which still has yet to be transcribed from Braille. He died in 1999.

February 19th - 21st, 2010 Friday & Saturday at 8pm, Sunday at 2pm Tickets $18.00, $15.00 students and seniors Buy tickets online!