About
Musician, author, filmmaker, curator, conservationist, digital music theorist, bicycle advocate, urban designer, visual artist, humanist. David Byrne has many ways of expressing himself; all of them heartfelt, authentic, and thought-provoking.
From his groundbreaking recording career, first with Talking Heads and then as a solo artist and collaborator, to his recent use of digital media to connect his creations to the world, he has been meshing art and technology to create jaw-dropping, soulful masterpieces that tell a story, and often invoke his audience to create some masterpieces of their own. In a recent art installation, Playing the Building, Byrne transformed an empty building into a musical instrument, and then invited visitors to play it.
His book “Bicycle Diaries” is a journal of what he thought and experienced while cycling through the cities of the world. His 2012 book “How Music Works” expands on his 2010 TED Talk to imagine how music is shaped by its time and place.
In 2019, Byrne announced the launch of a new solutions-oriented online magazine called “Reasons to Be Cheerful”. RTBC will publish stories detailing real changes with measurable impact that are meant to inspire and uplift. According to Byrne, RTBC will “reveal that there are, in fact, a surprising number of reasons to feel cheerful — that provide a more optimistic and, we believe, more accurate depiction of the world. We hope to balance out some of the amplified negativity and show that things might not be as bad as we think.”
