Knockdown Center’s newly minted monthly music series, VIRTU, features a cross section of the finest and most cutting-edge artists and DJs from a wide array of musical communities in New York and beyond.  Featuring simultaneous musical gatherings throughout the month, uniting various and sundry outsiders beneath Knockdown Center’s giant roof!

APRIL 1

Bardo Pond headlines with M AX NOI MACH, ERIC ARN in the Old Gallery, tix: http://bit.ly/2ncQA5p. Meanwhile Chthonic Streams’ “No Workers Paradise” release show fills the room we call “Texas” w/ harsh noise featuring WORK/ DEATH, THE VOMIT ARSONIST, GNAWED, & more tix: http://bit.ly/2lNfXdd

APRIL 6

Rapoon: Pas Musique: House of Blondse: On A Clear Day: Lucienraga: Live Visuals by Jim Tuite – An evening of expansive ambient noise headlined by former member of Zoviet France. Tix: http://ticketf.ly/2o4aShA.

APRIL 8

Worlds collide as Fake Accent celebrates their 3 year anniversary with rap artist Jay Boogie, Ase Manuel, Tygapaw and more takes the stage (tix: http://ticketf.ly/2nnCIqW) at the same time as composers and instrumentalists David Grubbs, Eli Keszler, Das Audit, and Mary Jordan pay tribute to late composer and visionary Tony Conrad, tix: http://ticketf.ly/2nzXfZV.

APRIL 14

Popgun Presents: Pavo Pavo, Charlie Looker Ensemble, & Ziemba. A showcase of masters of craft not to be missed. Plus, we hear Ziemba, who last year released a line of incense to accompany her album Hope is Never, will play a set that is especially fragrant. Tix: http://bit.ly/pavopavo.

APRIL 15

Young Magic makes a guest appearance to DJ our bar, the Ready Room (Free!), while On the Sly presents a showcase of club killers behind the decks, with DJ J Heat, Eaves, Gooddroid and more! Tix: http://bit.ly/2lA4Mop.

GROOVY GROOVY presents Aïsha Devi

AÏSHA DEVI (Danse Noire, Houndstooth) – US Debut
Aïsha Devi emerged in 2013 with the EP Aura 4 Everyone on her own sanctuary-label Danse Noire followed by the 12″ Hakken Dub/Throat Dub in Summer 2014. Danse Noire is dedicated to exploring abstracted club structures, and Devi’s own music mines her Nepalese-Tibetan heritage, using her machines to transmute deep meditation. Whether they are guttural or soprano, Devi’s warped pop mantras instruct us to find the unseen through a tense, visceral musical landscape that is often gnarled and industrial as it is danceable. Her debut LP ‘Of Matter And Spirit’, a “materialisation of her initiatic journey through her spiritual and origin quests”, was released October 2015 via Houndstooth and followed by March 2016′s lauded remix EP and video game by Emile Barret. Her live collaboration with Beijing artist Tianzhuo Chen (the artist behind her ‘Mazdâ video) and his collective Asian Dope Boys was debuted during CTM 2016 at Berghain. The A/V show featuring the visual artist Emile Barret- a declination of the videogame that includes material by Tianzhuo Chen – has since gone on to be presented all over the world including Montreal, Moscow, Mexico City and Tokyo as well as at prestigious festivals across Europe. We are excited to have her on this side of the pond for her US debut performance.
https://soundcloud.com/aisha-devi

GENG (PTP)
https://soundcloud.com/genggrizzly

EMBACI (NON)
https://soundcloud.com/embaci

GREG ZIFCAK
http://www.gzifcak.net/

PARTS 1&2 (SWEAT EQUITY)
https://soundcloud.com/sweat-equity

VESNA (GROOVY GROOVY)
https://soundcloud.com/vesnadj

Teen Body

Carroll

https://carroll.bandcamp.com/

Photocomfort

Georgia

Beat Detectives

Celebrating the music and spirit of a true original.

Alice Coltrane Turiyasangitananda was an American jazz pianist, organist, harpist, singer, composer and the wife of John Coltrane, the most venerated and influential saxophonist in the history of jazz. Alice’s recording catalog dates back to 1957, and during the last decade of her career – starting in the mid-’80s – she self-released four brilliant cassette albums. They contained a music she invented, inspired by the gospel music of the Detroit churches she grew up in, mixed together with the Indian devotional music of her religious practice.

Ten years after Alice’s passing, in what would have been her 80th year, we will celebrate her music and spirit at the stunning arts and performance space Knockdown Center in Queens. The first part is presented with New York label Luaka Bop, and inspired by the Sunday ceremonies Alice held at her Sai Anantam Ashram in California. Timed to coincide with sundown, the powerful, spiritual music will be performed by an ensemble led by music director Surya Botofasina, who grew up at the Ashram. The latter half will be a concert led by her son, Ravi Coltrane, featuring an all-star band playing music from throughout Alice’s career.

SUNSET SET: The Sai Anantam Singers & Special Guests
EVENING SET: Ravi Coltrane, Brandee Younger and more

We are pleased to announce a series of events celebrating the legacy and spirit of avant-garde musician, filmmaker, and artist Tony Conrad (1940–2016). Planned by friends, family, curators, and collaborators, the events include concerts and screenings at venues such as The Kitchen, Anthology Film Archives, and ISSUE Project Room, centering on a memorial the afternoon of Saturday, April 8, at the Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural and Educational Center. The memorial will feature speeches, videos, and musical performances from artists and writers that were close to Conrad.

TONY CONRAD

Throughout the six decades of his career, Tony Conrad stretched the limits of music and performance. In the 1960s, he drafted post-Cagean music compositions and text pieces, collaborating with artists such as Henry Flynt, Jack Smith, and—as part of legendary drone ensemble Theatre of Eternal Music—La Monte Young, Marian Zazeela, and John Cale. By the mid-’60s, Conrad had begun to focus his attention on film; in 1966, he created The Flicker, a stroboscopic masterpiece which stands as one of the first examples of structural film

From then on, Conrad’s socially-engaged multimedia works, such as Straight and Narrow and Ten Years Alive on the Infinite Plain, continued to push boundaries while investigating notions of authorship, viewership, discipline, and power.

In the ’70s, Conrad turned his attention to new media, working alongside artists such as Paul Sharits and Hollis Frampton while a professor State University of New York at Buffalo. In the ensuing decades, Conrad was a leader in Buffalo’s film, media, and educational communities through involvement with the Squeaky Wheel Media Coalition, Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center, Buffalo Cable Access Media, and the Department of Media Study at the university.

Conrad continued to make films in the ’80s, working with—and proving a major influence on—a younger generation of artists, namely Mike Kelley and Tony Oursler. The ’90s brought a resurgence of interest in Conrad’s music, with new and archival releases creating a wider audience than ever before for his groundbreaking minimal compositions.

Conrad performed music, screened films, and exhibited art in numerous mediums at festivals and institutions throughout the world, including the Museum of Modern Art and the Tate Modern. He had recently been the subject of solo exhibitions at Greene Naftali Gallery, New York; Galerie Buchholz, Cologne; and 80WSE, New York University. His films and artworks are in the collections of the Whitney Museum, the Albright-Knox Gallery, Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, and the ZKM Center for Art and Media, among others. He continued to teach, perform, transgress, and inspire up until his passing on April 9, 2016. A radical and thoughtful visionary, Tony Conrad is missed.

Universe- MC’s from far far + near taking over the Knockdown Center

Karma Kids
Akai Solo
Big Breakfa$t
Rich Jones
Lil Freckles

Man Forever
Man Forever is an exploratory percussion project helmed by John Colpitts (aka Kid Millions), one of New York’s most versatile and critically lauded collaborators and a founding member of Oneida.

https://johncolpitts.bandcamp.com/

CCDS
From St. Louis – Two Drummers, two drum sets. SciFi and Horror blasts.

https://ccdsdeathsquad.bandcamp.com/releases

Collapsible Shoulder
Collapsible Shoulder’s music is drawn from its members’ years in the downtown NYC and Brooklyn music scenes: neo-psychedelic with unpredictable twists and turns, an electronic-acoustic-sonic mash.

https://collapsibleshoulder.bandcamp.com/releases