Spotlight: Billy X will perform at Anderson Center

Billy Curmano, a nationally known Minnesota performance artist, musician and activist, will perform “Midnight Babylon” Friday April 13 at the Anderson Center. His play and a concert will follow a 7 p.m. presentation by Dr. Corine Wegener on preserving cultural resources threatened by war.

“I wrote it shortly after I returned from Vietnam in 1969,” Curmano said. The play premiered in New York City and toured, then he set it aside. But with each new war, he has brought it out again because the problem continues.

“People keep coming back (from war) forever changed, and we have to deal with it,” Curmano said.

When he went off to war, feeling invulnerable, “I didn’t realize it was going to affect me for the rest of my life.”

He has nightmares 40 years after the war, although he admits he still is in denial about having post-traumatic stress disorder.

Curmano, who lives near Winona, is known for edgy, eccentric performances that included swimming the 2,000-mile length of the Mississippi River; being buried 6 feet underground for three days; and performing “Cow-a-Bongo: Bongo Bovine,” an outdoor concert with his band for a herd of cows near Rushford, Minn.

For a glimpse of his work, go online to www.billyx.net.

Friday’s event will close with a performance by his band, Free X, in the Anderson Center cafeteria. The quartet performs “music that leans toward jazz and spoken word,” Curmano said. Instrumentation will include saxophone, flute, oboe, drums, bass, vibraphone, electric dulcimer, mbira and water harp.

For more information, call the Anderson Center at 651-388-2009 or go online to www.andersoncenter.org.

When: 7 p.m. Friday April 13

Where: Anderson Center, Highway 61 at Highway 19

More info: 651-388-2009 or www.andersoncenter.org

Tags: arts and entertainment, arts, entertainment, lifestyle