Classical Music Meets the Alternative Scene
By Brian Wise
MusicalAmerica.com
November 9, 2006

NEW YORK -- Success in real estate, they say, depends on location, location, location. In New York the phrase also applies to an emerging breed of classical music series.

Spurred on by a growing number of offbeat performance venues and enterprising young classical musicians, New York is experiencing a boom in small, largely below-the-radar concert series. There are opera nights at a Lower East Side dive bar, chamber music concerts at a boxing gym beneath the Brooklyn Bridge, contemporary music at a cabaret in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and avant-garde fare in a silo on the banks of an industrial canal.

The rise of an alternative classical scene recalls the 1960s and 70s, when downtown lofts and art galleries helped give rise to minimalism and performance art. The current crop of classical series resembles a similar trend happening in jazz and world-music circles, as the club epicenter has spread from Manhattan to Brooklyn. Classical musicians often say they are drawn to simpler, less pretentious encounters with audiences.

“It’s just like going to see a band,” says Anne Ricci, a soprano in describing Opera on Tap, an opera recital series that she co-founded in June 2005 at Freddy’s Bar and Backroom, a former bowling alley and cop bar in Park Slope, Brooklyn, that now presents live music.

“Audiences are allowed to be loud, they’re allowed to talk, get up and re-fill their beers. It helps the singers recover a sense of spontaneity that can easily be lost in the classical repertoire.”

Zach Layton, a composer and Oberlin graduate who curates a free new-music series called Darmstadt at the Galapagos Art Space in Williamsburg, Brooklyn says people in their 20s and 30s are often curious about classical music but recoil at the trappings of traditional venues.

“There are people who feel alienated by the extreme expense of the tickets that are sold uptown,” he says. “Presenting classical music in a non-traditional space like a bar opens up opportunities for people to hear music that they might not otherwise get a chance to hear. It’s also a psychological thing, because it just puts music in a more laid back space.”

Beyond bars and clubs, classical music is showing up in far grittier spaces. Among them:

The Issue Project Room, a new-music organization that relocated in June 2005 from the East Village into a former chemical storage silo on Brooklyn’s Gowanus Canal, regularly presents concerts such as the one on Oct. 27 with composer and electric guitarist Rhys Chatham, downtown composer Elliot Sharp and the Sirius String Quartet.

Gleason’s, a legendary boxing gym where fighters like Jake LaMotta, Muhammad Ali and Roberto Duran trained, will host its second concert by the International Street Cannibals, a chamber ensemble comprised of prominent New York freelancers, on Dec. 2. Boxers spar in one ring as musicians perform in another.

The Empty Vessel Project, a salvaged World War II Navy boat on the Gowanus Canal has housed floating art events, parties, movie nights, and concerts. Last month, after a nearby landlord called the Coast Guard complaining about noise, the City of New York ordered the boat moved. It's currently moored a bit further down the canal. On the Website the organizers ask, "Can you help us find a place to put her? Do you know anyone with waterfront property on the Gowanus or in Red Hook?...We would like to bring EV back to the public."

SpiegelTent, a vintage European traveling tent that set up shop at the former Fulton Fish Market in August and September, presented string quartet Ethel, violinist and composer Daniel Bernard Roumain and the S.E.M. Ensemble (all programmed by Zach Layton of Darmstadt).

In many ways, such series are a response to changing real estate patterns. As recent college graduates increasingly settle into deeper parts of Brooklyn, Queens and beyond, they find weekend commutes to Lincoln Center or Carnegie Hall inconvenient. “If you put a concert in a place where young people would go anyway, that’s half the battle,” says Patrick Hammond, a 25-year-old assistant vice-president at Concert Artists Guild who heads up “New Music/New Places,” a program that puts musicians from the organization’s roster in unconventional venues.

In September, Hammond started a monthly chamber music series at the Barbès Bar and Performance Space, a small Park Slope bar with a tiny performance area. He came up with the idea after getting tired of trying to convince his friends to make the nearly hour-long commute to the Upper West Side to hear classical music. At the first installment -- a solo recital by the cellist Soo Bae – an appreciative, casually dressed crowd of about 40 packed into the dark, funky back room. Olivier Conan, the co-owner of Barbès, said that he took on the series because he feels classical music should be more a part of everyday life. “Going to a concert hall is an endeavor,” he says. “You have to seek it out and buy tickets ahead of time, which can be a lot of money.”

Despite the non-traditional surroundings, Conan finds that audiences prefer standard classical fare “with some crossover and fusion” over more unfamiliar contemporary music. Some artists play only single movements from pieces -- catering to MTV-nurtured attention spans -- although Conan noted that he doesn’t want to pander. Artist fees at Barbès, like many bars, are collected by “passing the hat” (Concert Artists Guild kicks in additional funding as well).

"Finances are toughest part,” says Hammond, who frequently pairs a classical artist on a double bill with a pop act in order to divide expenses and maximize exposure. "If you put a string quartet in a bar for a day, nobody’s going to necessarily show up,” he says. “But if you have them following a rock act, which has its own e-mail list, that will bring people in."

Earlier this fall, the PARKER STRING QUARTET, also on the Concert Artists Guild roster, rented a van and embarked on a seven-city East Coast tour with Wynn Walent, a singer-songwriter from New York who recently released his debut album. Hitting bars and clubs from Boston to Charlotte, the young musicians wrote a blog about the experience at Gothamist.com.

Concert Artists Guild, founded in 1951, has a long history of seeking out and finding new audiences. But newer organizations are just starting to learn the ropes. Opera on Tap, which has a roster of 40 post-collegiate singers, is in the process of becoming a nonprofit educational organization and earlier this month held its first fundraiser at Freddy’s Bar and Backroom. In August it made its Manhattan debut at the Parkside Lounge, a scruffy dive bar on the Lower East Side.

The Issue Project Room has also incorporated as a nonprofit and is beginning to commission works for its 16-channel speaker system. And Layton’s Brooklyn series, which marks its second anniversary Nov. 30th with a performance of Terry Riley’s “In C” at Galapagos, is currently applying for non-profit status.

As these series grow, it will be interesting to see if they can maintain their hip, alternative appeal, while continuing to serve their original audience. David Schotzko, a percussionist and program director of the International Contemporary Ensemble, a group based in both New York and Chicago, explained that, when the group started out in 2001 it played for a mostly young audience who had heard about them through fliers in bars and cafes.

But as ICE became more established, its audience grew older. “A lot of our audience graduated,” Schotzko notes. So last month, fresh off an appearance at the Mostly Mozart Festival at Lincoln Center, the ensemble tried re-connect with its younger base by presenting a weeklong festival of shows in several Chicago bars and cafes. This month, the group is performing not only at Merkin Concert Hall but also at Monkeytown, a bar in Williamsburg.

Schotzko points out that different types of spaces require different types of repertoire. “When you’re programming, you have to expect the noise.” The quiet works of Morton Feldman, for example, wouldn’t do too well among dart games and rasping cocktail shakers. “It’s hard to play Feldman in most bars