{"id":384,"date":"2011-02-24T17:57:49","date_gmt":"2011-02-24T22:57:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/wp\/2011\/02\/gowanus_a_brooklyn_neighborhoo\/"},"modified":"2011-02-24T17:57:49","modified_gmt":"2011-02-24T22:57:49","slug":"gowanus_a_brooklyn_neighborhoo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/2011\/02\/gowanus_a_brooklyn_neighborhoo.html","title":{"rendered":"Toxic Gowanus, Brooklyn neighb of new music lofts"},"content":{"rendered":"

Gowanus, a Brooklyn neighborhood so unlovely it’s been named an EPA superfund site, \"03gowanus_CA0-articleLarge.jpg\"is Ground Zero now for music lofts, as reported in my new City Arts-New York column<\/a>. In a half dozen or so artist-run spaces — including IBeam<\/a>, Douglas Street Collective<\/a>, Littlefield<\/a>, the Brooklyn Lyceum<\/a> and Issue Project Room<\/a> — available for presentation and rehearsal of hard-core experimental sounds, dance, video and performance art, the programming is typically spiky, ambitious and unsentimental.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n


\nThat description certainly fits the great and under-acknowledged guitarist-inventor-composer-bluesman Elliott Sharp,<\/a> who celebrates his 60th birthday with a solo guitar performance, collaborations with actor Steve Buscemi and filmmaker Jo Andres, sci-fi author Jack Womack and poet Tracie Morris, and premieres of a string quartet and double string quartet on March 4 at Issue Project Room. The entire concert is\"ESHARPFORWEB.jpg\" a benefit to help IPR leave<\/i> Gowanus for not-far-away Downtown Brooklyn (which is little more scenic, but targeted as a culture hub by Brooklyn’s borough president Marty Markowitz<\/a>, who’s directed funds into IPR’s relocation and renovation). <\/p>\n

\n
\n
<\/div>\n
\n
What I don’t get into in my article (due to old fashioned print publication space limitations) is Share<\/a>, the weekly wide-open music-video jam session I attended at IPR on a Sunday night a couple weeks ago, which was more fun with electronics than I’d had in quite a while — so cool I plan to do it again. A dozen people fooling around unself-consciously, without plan or leadership, using contact mikes on garbage can lids, deconstructed and prepared electric guitars, laptop sound constructions, a Korg Monotron, <\/a>conventional flute and musical cell phone apps, all pumped through fine, loud speakers, with simultaneous live video mixes . . . I twiddled knobs, drank a glass of wine and felt like I was in the midst of Morton Subotnicks’ Silver Apples of the Moon<\/a>. Big fun. <\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
To think: Douglas Street, Littlefield, IBeam, the Lyceum and also Park Slope’s jazz spots Tea Lounge<\/a>, Barbes<\/a> and Puppets<\/a> are just a short walk away. All this activity almost makes Brooklyn seem and sound like the East Village used to. Which much mean there are a lot of restless, quirky, ambitious and underemployed artists around, looking for places they can get together to spread out, gather friends, stay up late, make a lot of noise. Warning: Damn little boutique shopping or fine dining nearby. Mostly  warehouses abutting a stinking canal, the roaring Brooklyn-Queens Expressway and some of the grittiest truck routes from Flatbush to Red Hook.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n

howardmandel.com<\/a>
\nSubscribe by Email <\/a> |
\nSubscribe by RSS<\/a> |
\nFollow on Twitter <\/a>
\n All JBJ posts <\/a> |
\n