{"id":6704,"date":"2019-02-24T19:46:32","date_gmt":"2019-02-24T19:46:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/?p=6704"},"modified":"2019-02-24T19:50:02","modified_gmt":"2019-02-24T19:50:02","slug":"john-zorns-stone-rolls-into-brooklyns-crown-heights","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/2019\/02\/24\/john-zorns-stone-rolls-into-brooklyns-crown-heights\/","title":{"rendered":"John Zorn’s Stone Rolls Into Brooklyn’s Crown Heights"},"content":{"rendered":"
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photo by Liane Fredel<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The darker blocks within the wood floor of happylucky no. 1<\/a>, an art gallery and community arts space in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn, spell out the name of the place in morse code, according to Liane Fredel.<\/p>\n

Fredel, the former graphic designer who bought the space five years ago, renovated it to express, \u201can inviting concept, open but with an air of mystery,\u201d she said, and she intends it to foster \u201cmore than just art, but rather a larger sense of culture.\u201d<\/p>\n

There is no sign outside announcing the place. There is, however a website, that offers this by way of description:<\/p>\n

\u2026a gray, fishscaly building\u2026. The fa\u00e7ade is marked by a door and a yellow neon dandelion. We are not exactly sure what happens, or what will happen, within the elongated rectangular box that is the interior of happylucky no. 1.\u00a0 Vaguely speaking, there will be events, exhibitions and experiments, the subjects\/results of which might occasionally be edible, or medicinal.<\/p>\n

There will be things on the walls and floors and floating through the air; sights, sounds and ideas requesting your assistance in their propagation.\u00a0 There will be triumphs and, as this is a human endeavor, the occasional disaster.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

All of the above\u2014the subtly encoded messages, the overarching mission and the blend of seriousness and humor\u2014make happylucky no. 1 a fitting home for the latest iteration of The Stone\u2014 which began as a tiny but influential East Village performance space in an unmarked windowless former Chinese restaurant, founded by John Zorn in 2005 to present experimental \u00a0music, and that has grown into a somewhat sprawling initiative.<\/p>\n

Zorn, whose influence as a producer and presenter now equals his stature as a musician and composer, has curated \u201cThe Stone Series<\/a>\u201d at happylucky no. 1, beginning March 1\u2014Friday and Saturday night performance that will run at least through 2020.<\/p>\n

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happylucky no. 1’s dandelion, lit at night\/ photo: Liane Fredel<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I wrote in the Village Voice<\/a> about the 2018 closing of Zorn\u2019s East Village club, and the establishment of The Stone\u00a0within the New School\u2019s College of Performing Arts, taking up residence in the New School\u2019s Glass Box Theater, a sleek climate-controlled space featuring a glass wall facing a busy Greenwich Village street. Weekly shows, Tuesdays through Saturdays, continue at this flagship location. These days, there are also a Stone Commission Series at National Sawdust, a high-culture outpost in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, and a monthly Stone series at Russ and Daughters, a Lower East Side landmark best known for its bagels, bialys and smoked fish.<\/p>\n

Throughout his career, Zorn has been branded many things and might once have been cast as an avant-garde outsider. Yet times\u2014though not so much, Zorn\u2014have changed. His music has been celebrated at Manhattan cultural temples including Lincoln Center, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Village Vanguard, not to mention festivals of all stripes worldwide; his aesthetic and his ever-widening circle of collaborators \u00a0now fuels and helps shape whatever we mean by the forward-moving, genre-defying construct \u201ccreative music.\u201d Zorn is, simply put, creative music\u2019s consummate \u201cdoer.\u201d\u00a0He gets an awful lot accomplished, much of it in exalted fashion. That there is no easy summing up of Zorn\u2019s artistry has something to do with his refusal to heed aesthetic boundaries, yes, but it\u2019s also just a function of how much work there is, and how consistently and exponentially it all evolves.<\/p>\n

For all the seeming complexity of his artistry, Zorn\u2019s approach to collaboration is simple. \u201cI find people I want to work with,\u201d he once told me, \u201cand we just get down to it.\u201d I recall interviewing Zorn and director Richard Foreman for The Wall Street Journal <\/a>about their 2009 collaboration, \u201cAstronome: A Night at the Opera.\u201d As Foreman explained to me: “I ran in to John on a street corner. I told him, ‘Why don’t you write me an opera?’ He shrugged and said ‘OK.’ So we did.”<\/p>\n

In December last year, after a mutual acquaintance introduced Zorn to Fredel, he stopped by her Brooklyn gallery. \u201cHe came in,\u201d said Fredel, \u201cand he was like a firecracker\u2014boom, boom, boom<\/em>\u2014here\u2019s what you need to do.\u201d Other than some sound-absorbing curtains and dedicated green room, the gallery needed little alteration. Within 48 hours of their meeting, Zorn sent a full schedule of bookings through 2020. (\u201cI had a free weekend,\u201d Zorn explained.)<\/p>\n

Fredel\u2019s space is run by her, independently. For The Stone Series, she will adhere to Zorn\u2019s rules: musicians earn 100% of the door (admission is $20); no food or drink will be served; and no photography, video or recording by audience members will be allowed. The Opening weekend (March 1 & 2) will present all-star \u201cImprov Nights,\u201d featuring Zorn, among others. (A complete schedule can be found here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

When Fredel and I met earlier this month, we sat on the folding chairs upon wooden risers that form her movable concert hall, and that houses a capacity roughly the same as the original Stone room (72). The cushions that form the audience\u2019s first row reminded me of those at Preservation Hall, in New Orleans, which also originated as a music series at an art gallery.<\/p>\n

Fredel said that her gallery\u2019s odd name was meant simply to indicate \u201csomething that is positive and good.\u201d But it sounds like a New York Chinese take-out joint. That harks back, coincidentally, to The Stone\u2019s origins, in a former Chinese place. And, for Fredel, there’s a deeper resonance.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re a takeout too,\u201d she said, \u201cjust a different kind of takeout. You take joy out of this place.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The darker blocks within the wood floor of happylucky no. 1, an art gallery and community arts space in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn, spell out the name of the place in morse code, according to Liane Fredel. Fredel, the former graphic designer who bought the space five years ago, renovated it to express, … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “John Zorn’s Stone Rolls Into Brooklyn’s Crown Heights”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[25,11,485,483,10,14,484,262],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6704"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6704"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6704\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6713,"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6704\/revisions\/6713"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6704"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6704"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6704"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}