A “Jazz Pop-Up” on W. Broadway

I spotted two guys working at the former Butterfly space at 225 W. Broadway, so naturally I asked what was up. Isaiah Barr said that he’s doing a “jazz pop-up,” and that his band, the Onyx Collective, will use the space for rehearsals. (The Onyx Collective has played at MoMA PS1, the Gramercy Park Hotel, the Jane Hotel, the Boom Boom Room, among other venues.) Barr also said that the Onyx Collective’s show on Know-Wave, an online radio station, will be broadcast from there. Perhaps in May, he said, the public will be able to participate.

A 2014 i-D article explains that Know-Wave was founded by “Aaron Bondaroff, aka Downtown Don, […] widely known as the face of Supreme, owner of streetwear label aNYthing, and co-founder of OHWOW gallery.” Know-Wave is mostly not jazz. “You can trip between Balearic disco and music box jams from pro skater Alex Olson to Weirdo Dave’s warped murmurings, out to Skepta battling the Ratking kids and a smooth set from Dev Hynes,” said i-D. “Records fly off the deck, and you feel like you’re earwigging into a vivid conversation, and often it doesn’t even necessarily feel like radio, it feels like you’ve tuned into a banging house party.”

Bondaroff told Paper in November that he gave Onyx Collective a weekly show on Know-Wave to “introduce what’s going on with jazz and youth culture to a new station.” (A recent Onyx Collective radio show is below.) How this all came to be at 225 W. Broadway is still a mystery; the building is owned by the Nur Ashki Jerrahi Community, the Sufi order located at 245 W. Broadway. The Onyx Collective’s Know-Wave show from April 12 mentions a “secret W. Broadway location” called NYXO—a rearranging of ONYX—so presumably that’s what they’re calling it.

 

1 Comment

  1. This space is now apparently being used for their concerts at night, complete with bouncer and with large numbers of people both inside and noisily loitering outside on the street up to White Street.

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