13 Most Beautiful… Press Release
OZ ARTS NASHVILLE PRESENTS 13 MOST BEAUTIFUL…SONGS FOR ANDY WARHOL’S SCREEN TESTS, JANUARY 17, 2015
Dean & Britta Perform Their Original Soundtracks to a Selection of Warhol’s Four-Minute Silent Film Portraits
OZ Arts Nashville is pleased to present 13 Most Beautiful…Songs for Andy Warhol’s Screen Tests, January 17, 2015. In this acclaimed production, seminal indie rock musicians Dean & Britta perform their original dream pop scores to a selection of Warhol’s Screen Tests—short, silent film portraits the iconic artist shot of visitors to his studio, the Factory—as the films are projected, large-scale, in OZ Arts’ vast warehouse space. Dean & Britta’s soundtracks weave together melodic guitar hooks and wistful lyrics to tell the stories of the individuals in the films: Factory superstars, celebrities, and anonymous teenagers.
Dean & Britta will perform 13 Most Beautiful…Songs for Andy Warhol’s Screen Tests at 8pm on Saturday, January 17, 2015. Tickets, $30 – $42.50, can be purchased at www.oznashville.com. The performance runs 70 minutes, with no intermission. OZ Arts Nashville is located at 6172 Cockrill Bend Circle in Nashville.
13 Most Beautiful…Songs for Andy Warhol’s Screen Tests is like an archeological dig unearthing New York City’s 1960s art scene. Between 1964 and 1966, Warhol asked some 500 subjects—including Edie Sedgwick, Dennis Hopper, Nico, Lou Reed, Jane Holzer and many others—to pose, lit them with a strong keylight, and filmed them with his stationary 16mm Bolex camera on silent, black-and-white, 100-foot rolls of film. The Screen Tests were shown at the Factory, as short subjects in avant-garde screenings, and as a primary visual component of Warhol’s multi-media happenings Andy Warhol Uptight (1966) and the Exploding Plastic Inevitable (1967). Those shows, featuring live performances by the Velvet Underground and Nico, provide a precedent and historic basis for 13 Most Beautiful.
13 Most Beautiful…Songs for Andy Warhol’s Screen Tests was jointly commissioned by The Andy Warhol Museum and The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust for the 2008 Pittsburgh International Festival of Firsts, and was developed by Ben Harrison, curator of performing arts, with Geralyn Huxley, curator of film and video, and Greg Pierce, assistant curator of film and video of The Warhol. Taking the form of a multi-media concert, the project began touring in January 2009 at New York’s Lincoln Center, and has since toured throughout the country and internationally to almost fifty venues.
The multimedia concert has garnered vast critical praise. The New York Times called the program “mesmerizing” and said, “The music unabashedly translates the ominous drone of early Velvet Underground songs like ‘I’m Waiting for the Man’ and ‘Venus in Furs’ into a more modern electronic mode reminiscent of Giorgio Moroder’s chic torture-chamber disco.” The BBC has said, “[13 Most Beautiful] highlights yet another of Warhol’s artistic endeavours with just the right mix of reverence and charm.”
The project also resulted in the first official release of early Warhol films on DVD, which was produced in collaboration with Plexifilm and launched in April 2009. Dean & Britta released the double-album soundtrack in 2010.
Dean & Britta are Dean Wareham and Britta Philips, formerly of the 90s alt-rock band Luna. Started by Wareham in 1992, Luna made seven studio albums and played their final shows in 2005. Prior to Luna, Wareham fronted Galaxie 500. Philips joined Luna in 2000, before which she played in several bands, starred in the movie Satisfaction, and was the singing voice of 80s cartoon character JEM. The duo released L’Avventura, an album of covers and duets, in 2005, and Back Numbers in 2009. Dean & Britta have scored several films, most notably Noah Baumbach’s The Squid & The Whale.
OZ Media Contacts
Nashville press, please contact Amy Atkinson at Amy Atkinson Communications, 615.305.8118 or amy@amyacommunications.com.
National press, please contact Blake Zidell at Blake Zidell & Associates, 718.643.9052 or blake@blakezidell.com.