Alternate Title The Next Wave of Song: Marc Anthony Thompson / Ben Folds / Stephin Merritt, The Next Wave of Song: Marc Anthony Thompson/Ben Folds/Stephin Merritt
Production Language English
Country of Origin United States
Description The Next Wave of Song delivers the best in innovative, contemporary songwriting straight from the artists’ mouths to your ears. This year's bill—Ben Folds, Stephin Merritt, and Marc Anthony Thompson—is mandatory for fans of adventurous popular music.
Ben Folds’ songs are a heady mix of 70s-style piano-rock balladry, in-your-face punk sensibility, and clever, character-driven lyrics. Folds and his former band, Ben Folds Five, drew worldwide attention with their 1997 platinum album, Whatever & Ever Amen, and its breakout single, “Brick.” Last fall, Folds released his first solo album, Rockin' the Suburbs.
“The music of Stephin Merritt refracts the entire American songbook, from Stephen Foster to punk rock by way of Cole Porter, into an intimate downscale chamber music” (The New York Times). Since the phenomenon that is Merritt's 69 Love Songs, an immensely varied, inventive, and absorbing three-disc song cycle, the leader of the Magnetic Fields (and its many offshoots) has been recognized as perhaps the finest pop songsmith to emerge in a generation.
Blending elements of soul, pop, and rock with uniquely insightful lyrics in his albums Black Music and Godmusic, Brooklyn's own Marc Anthony Thompson (leader of the musicians' collective Chocolate Genius) has attracted both critical acclaim and a loyal audience. Thompson's idiosyncratic and engaging live shows have led The New York Times to call him “the most entertaining showman currently working the New York stage.”
Identifier 2002f.00748
