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Artist
Winston Tong
12+ albums
experimentalnew waveminimal wave80sAvant-Garde
about
Winston Tong is a San Francisco-based performance artist and singer, celebrated both for his solo work and his collaborations with the cult group Tuxedomoon. Polymath performance artist Winston Tong was born in San Francisco in 1951, the son of Chinese parents exiled by the Communist revolution. He graduated in theatre from the California Institute of Arts in 1973, and quickly established a reputation in the Bay Area with a string of charismatic performance pieces such as Wild Boys, Eliminations, Frankie and Johnnie and Bound Feet, the latter loosely based on traditional oriental puppet theatre, and an Obie award winner. In late 1977 Tong met an early incarnation of Tuxedomoon, then comprising Steven Brown, Blaine Reininger and Victoria Lowe, after Lowe invited Tong to perform at a self-organized salon, Chez Dada. Afterwards Tong agreed to perform with the band as and when time allowed, a flexible arrangement which would remain in place until he finally ceased working with the band in 1985. At about the same time Tong met Bruce Geduldig, who would take on responsibility for visuals and staging with both Tong and Tuxedomoon. Tong's first record appeared in the spring of 1979 and is a Tuxedomoon release in all but name. Featuring TM members Brown, Reininger, Peter Principle and Paul Zahl, The Stranger paid homage to the existential classic by Albert Camus, while the flipside Love/No Hope offered spiky angst-rock at one with the first two Tuxedomoon eps, No Tears and Scream W
