Acclaimed avant-garde ensemble Text of Light – a quartet of musicians including Sonic Youth co-founder Lee Ranaldo – will perform a live, improvisational score to accompany two 1920s-era silent films in a performance on the High Line at “City Symphonies: Text of Light” on Friday, November 13, at 7:00 pm in the High Line’s 14th Street Passage.

Ranaldo and his bandmates – composer and saxophonist Ulrich Krieger, guitarist and composer Alan Licht, turntablist and visual artist Christian Marclay – will perform a live musical score to Berlin: Symphony of a Great City (Walter Ruttman, 1927), a feature-length “city symphony” film that captures urban life through a vibrant mix of documentary footage, abstract visual compositions, and impressionistic montage techniques. Text of Light’s loosely structured score will feature the remarkable intonarumori (Futurist noise machines), among many other instruments. The live performance to Berlin will be preceded by a screening of the short film Manhatta (Charles Sheeler and Paul Strand, 1921), another city symphony that depicts a day in New York City.

The event is co-presented by Performa and Friends of the High Line with Rooftop Films; curated by Lana Wilson and Esa Nickle and sponsored by Viper Studios. This performance is part of Performa ‘09, the internationally acclaimed biennial of new visual art performance presented by Performa, a non-profit multidisciplinary arts organization dedicated to exploring the critical role of live performance in the history of twentieth century art and to encouraging new directions in performance for the twenty-first century.

More information is available at http://www.sonicurbs.com/textoflight or at www.thehighline.org.