David Byrne's Love Lies in Carnegie Hall

Though David Byrne has spent the last 15 years exploring new musical territory, he is still best known as the songwriter and lead vocalist for Talking Heads, the influential band he helped found in 1974. Since the band's breakup in 1991, Byrne has produced an eclectic array of new material and has become a mentor and inspiration to a new generation of musicians, including the Arcade Fire and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. It is therefore admirable that Carnegie Hall invited Byrne to curate his own "Perspectives" series last weekend. The four-concert series featured performances by Byrne as well as handpicked guest artists, including Vashti Bunyan and Alarm Will Sound.

On Saturday night, Byrne gave New York audiences the first peek at his new song cycle, Here Lies Love, based on the life of Imelda Marcos, the controversial former first lady of the Philippines. Byrne is obviously fascinated by Imelda, who played a prominent diplomatic role during the 10-year period of martial law declared by her husband Ferdinand. On his website, Byrne speculates that Here Lies Love might be about the "conflation of fantasy, personal pain, and politics that runs through history." However, the music and lyrics made Byrne's own views on his controversial subject hard to pinpoint.

As Byrne casually walked onstage, the sold-out house shook with applause. "This is some place to audition new material. So, thanks to Carnegie for taking the risk," he said. Luckily for Byrne, it was a risk that the musically adventurous audience (I bumped into Philip Glass in the men's room) was more than willing to take.

Clocking in at a hefty two hours, Here Lies Love - a collaboration with Fatboy Slim - can be described as a four-act disco opera. The 20 songs that comprise the work (the title refers to Imelda Marcos' desired epitaph are all in a very pop-musical vein. In the program notes, Byrne writes that he felt a dance-music idiom would be a good way to make people care about this woman.

Most of the songs were sung by Joan Almedilla and Ganda Suthivarakom, respectively representing Imelda and her governess, Estrella . The composer was on guitar and only joined in for a third of the songs and even on those, he was mostly restricted to backup. Byrne and the soloists were later joined by a band that included drums, percussion, and bass. For the final five songs, a small orchestra joined them onstage.

Though technically a work in progress (Byrne sees the project going in a more theatrical direction), the first performance in Australia this past May was a partly-staged, multimedia production. At Carnegie, the theatrical conceit was muted, although it certainly came across in the tuneful, melody-driven and infectiously danceable songs. Midway through the evening, a few teenagers did a rather lonely dance in the aisles and the ushers let them have their fun. The lyrics were often syrupy (for example, "The most important things are love and beauty / It doesn't matter if you're rich or poor") and the tunes were conventional to the point of mystification. One might consider Here Lies Love Byrne's Evita.