To know the legend of the Brooklyn Academy of Music is to understand the nature of America’s best performance and multi-arts centers as they once were, and as they promise to be.
Since 1861, the Borough of Brooklyn has grown up around BAM, and was shaped in part by the pull of its considerable gravity. Decades before there was Lincoln Center, Wallis Annenberg, or Kennedy Center, there was BAM.
Dance, Film, Theater, Music, Visual Art, Opera, Talks, and Community Events, all come together in one central square.
Past BAM artists have included Enrico Caruso, Sarah Bernhardt, Merce Cunningham, Bill T. Jones, and Jay Z. BAM has hosted numerous live TV events, like MTV’s Unplugged and ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live. BAM’s annual Next Wave Festival changes the performing arts landscape, year after year.
And then 2020 happened, a year we all want to forget, but a bright light is shining in Fort Greene once again, as we turn the page.
BAM is back. With a season relaunch unlike anything else in its history, BAM is taking it outside to another one of Brooklyn’s historic landmarks, developing a wide-ranging slate of outdoor affairs for the coming season, including 1:1 Concerts, a Pop-Up Magazine event, and Movement Theatre Company’s production of Aleshea Harris’s play What to Send Up When It Goes Down, presented in partnership with Playwrights Horizons.
The City of New York, and indeed the rest of the country are lucky to have institutions that continue to form the fabric of what culture and community mean in the modern age.
WNDW and our family of friends and colleagues are overjoyed at the return of such an institution.
Welcome back!
