Darmstadt (2004 - ) — Nick Hallett

Darmstadt: Classics of the Avant Garde began in 2004 as a monthly happy-hour event for co-founder Zach Layton and to DJ our avant-garde records to an "invaluable" (New Yorker) presenter of large-scale festivals of music and performance. In recent years, our activities have been more “nomadic” (New Yorker) in nature.

A five-year partnership with ISSUE Project Room from 2008 through 2013 resulted in Darmstadt’s most fruitful period, beginning with the formation of our Essential Repertoire series. Zach and I produced, directed, and performed new interpretations of Karlheinz Stockhausen's Originale (1961) and John Cage and Lejaren Hiller's HPSCHD (1969), presented the New York premiere of Stockhausen's final electronic work, Cosmic Pulses, fêted Pauline Oliveros on her 80th birthday, and recalled the artists of The Kitchen's 1979 New Music New York festival. Other offerings during the ISSUE Project Room partnership included a month-long festival “Institute.” Highlights included a sunset performance of Stockhausen's Musik Im Bauch in Central Park, masterclasses by Joan La Barbara, Tristan Perich, and Anthony Braxton, a performance of Louis Andriessen's Hoketus by Yarn/Wire on the facade of the New York Stock Exchange, and a rare outing of David Borden's pioneering electronics ensemble Mother Mallard's Portable Masterpiece Company. Darmstadt’s annual concert of Terry Riley's In C has been hailed more than once by the New York Times as our city’s "best.”