PINC.US 2011 Retired

I'm shutting down the most recent version of my website. It lasted two years, pretty good in web-time. I'll be launching the beta version of my new site ASAP. I think this will be the 6th edition, but I'll have to check on that.

Isa Tapia

My friend Isa Tapia has launched a new website for her high-fashion collection of women's shoes.

Xanadu

Juan Atkins goes to town in our Xanadu DJ booth for the opening of the Expanded Music Project at Land of Tomorrow.

Irregular Pentagonal Antiprism

Here are a couple images of the DJ Booth we have on exhibit at Land of Tomorrow. The form is based on an irregular pentagonal antiprism, and clad in padded sections of gold-sparkle vinyl and cheap maroon carpet. Pictures of it in action forthcoming...

Concrete Pumping

Pouring Concrete on the roof of the Original Music Workshop

Today, Branca Concrete Pumping and Corona Ready Mix poured hundreds of gallons of concrete onto a metal pan and steel beam structure to form the roof of the Original Music Workshop.

Year in Culture Top 10

New York Magazine's Justin Davidson names Skyful, the preview performance at the Original Music Workshop, one of the top 10 classical performances of 2012.

"On a perfect summer night in a roofless Williamsburg factory, the keening of Kinan Azmeh’s clarinet ricocheted off the century-old brick walls, kicking off construction of the Original Music Workshop."

T5 Chandelier Prototype

This is the first prototype of a chandelier I'm designing using T5 flourescents. Definitely needs more lights...

Magos Celso at OMW

Magos Celso delivers a stunning performance for the latest In Situ at Original Music Workshop,

Expanded Music Project

I'm excited to be a part of the Expanded Music Project, an event curated by my good friend Drura Parrish and featuring some amazing talents. I'm designing a roller rink in an art gallery. More interestingly I'm designing what could possibly be the sleaziest dj booth of all time for Juan Atkins, the inventor of techno. It's a tesselated, irregular pentagonal antiprism upholstered in sparkle gold vinyl with a maroon carpeted interior. And I'm making a few chandeliers.

Chris Cran in Canadian Biennial

Chris Cran, Family (1987). Oil on canvas

My father-in-law, Chris Cran, is included in BUILDERS, the Canadian Biennial at the National Gallery of Canada.

Camaro

Faceted Framing

Today I spent the day helping Michael Cran, my brother-in-law, work on the structure for this bike shelter. It is part of a courtyard we designed at Bureau V for a new development on 14th St. in Manhattan.

Cailliope Gets Great Review by New York Times

Calliope, a new restaurant by my friends Eric and Ginevra, received an amazing and well deserved review in today's New York Times.

Signage

It is important to have a sign on your construction site!

Butterflies Roam at a Concert Hall in Infancy, Still Without a Roof

Via The New York Times, written by Zachary Woolfe:

You will not immediately be able to know, when it opens a little over a year from now, that there is anything very special about the Original Music Workshop. Aside from a few large windows, from the outside it will look like any of the old factory buildings scattered throughout Williamsburg.

Appearances can be deceiving. Nestled inside the building’s weathered brick shell will be a small concert hall with translucent ceiling and walls set at dozens of jagged angles: “a radiant jewel,” its architect, Bureau V, promises, in a scruffy postindustrial box.

On Thursday evening all that was still many months in the future as dozens of people gathered, surrounded by the factory’s looming brick walls under a clear, starry sky, for a glimpse of the raw space and a preview of the hall’s programming plans, which will be fleshed out in a series of concerts at the Greene Space over the coming year.

There has recently been a boom in fresh spots for new music in Brooklyn, including the brand-new BAM Fisher at the Brooklyn Academy of Music; Galapagos Art Space (which moved from Williamsburg to Dumbo in 2008); Roulette; and the Issue Project Room, situated, like the Original Music Workshop, in a kind of modern ruin.

PhotoA performance designed by the artist Erika Harrsch, with butterfly-shaped kites, was among the acts at Original Music Workshop in Williamsburg on Thursday. Credit Marcus Yam for The New York Times

The workshop — led by the creative director Paola Prestini, herself a noted composer — will have in common with these other halls an emphasis on variety. Anchored by a select group of resident ensembles and artists, the programming will span opera, indie rock, electronica and Baroque. On Thursday, in a concert called “Skyful,” the quartet Brooklyn Rider’s performance of Gyorgy Kurtag’s icy, potent “Microludes” shared the bill with the sexily smoky voice of Magos Herrera, paying tribute to the great Mexican singer Chavela Vargas, who died last month.

Despite the high walls, the outside world was never too far away. One of two pieces written and performed by the excellent clarinetist Kinan Azmeh used melodies sung during the recent demonstrations in Mr. Azmeh’s native Syria. In a performance designed by the visual artist Erika Harrsch, butterfly-shaped kites were printed with blown-up images of American currency, a beautiful but melancholy accompaniment to works for flute duet by Mario Diaz de León and Julian Wachner. The intense soprano Tony Arnold sang fragments of popular song lyrics in a stratospheric register in the Talea Ensemble’s performance of Bernhard Lang’s “DW 16: Songbook 1,” her piercing notes matched by bursts of Geoff Landman’s saxophone.

The founder of the Original Music Workshop, Kevin Dolan, has donated $8 million of the project’s $14 million cost, but there are still significant fund-raising hurdles to clear. On Thursday, though, it was easy to feel hopeful and excited that the evening’s richness and range would be a fixture of the city for many years to come.