An Evening With David Byrne: Sleeping Beauties

David Byrne is coming to the Assembly Rooms on Friday 13 November for a brand-new solo talk. It's called An Evening With David Byrne: Sleeping Beauties, and it's built around his forthcoming book of the same name. The whole thing is a single hour with no interval, so you're in and out in one go.

The talk takes its lead from Sleeping Beauties, and Byrne uses it to ask why some ideas flourish almost instantly while others stay hidden in plain sight, celebrating the visionaries who were well ahead of their time. It's a solo performance, so it's just him on stage talking through those ideas rather than a full band or a concert. It's also one of a strictly limited run of five events across the UK, and Byrne's fees from the night go to the Rocksteady Foundation.

If you're not entirely sure where to place him, it helps to look at the range he's covered. He co-founded Talking Heads in 1975, and since then his work has moved across music, film, theatre, photography and visual art. He scored The Last Emperor, which picked up an Academy Award, a Golden Globe and a Grammy, and brought his vision to the stage with the Broadway production American Utopia, which won a Special Tony Award and was later adapted into a film directed by Spike Lee. He also did the disco musical Here Lies Love. Beyond the stage and screen, he started Reasons to Be Cheerful, an online publication focused on solutions-based journalism, and has written Bicycle Diaries, How Music Works and Arboretum.

Tickets start from £29.50 including all fees, with higher tiers at £55 and £38.50, and an add-on available for £24.20. There's a 10% per-ticket booking fee on top, plus a £2 non-refundable fee for telephone and online bookings. The talk starts at 7:30pm at the Assembly Rooms, 54 George Street, Edinburgh EH2 2LR.