Gowanus, a Brooklyn neighborhood so unlovely it’s been named an EPA superfund site, is Ground Zero now for music lofts, as reported in my new City Arts-New York column. In a half dozen or so artist-run spaces — including IBeam, Douglas Street Collective, Littlefield, the Brooklyn Lyceum and Issue Project Room — available for presentation and rehearsal of hard-core experimental sounds, dance, video and performance art, the programming is typically spiky, ambitious and unsentimental.
Ayler lives! in the East River
Visionary saxophonist Albert Ayler liked to stare at the sun, which may have led to his drowning at age 34 in 1970. An upstart 7-hour outdoor festival celebrates the heedlessly ecstatic spirit of his music tomorrow, July 10, at Riverwalk Commons of Roosevelt Island, in the very waters where the man-beyond-jazz breathed his last.