Brooklyn Academy of Music

The Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) is a multi-arts center in Brooklyn, New York City. It hosts progressive and avant-garde performances, with theater, dance, music, opera, film programming across multiple nearby venues.

BAM was chartered in 1859, presented its first show in 1861, and began operations in its present location in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, in 1908. The Academy is incorporated as a New York State not-for-profit corporation. It has 501(c)(3) status. Gina Duncan has served as president since April 2022. David Binder became artistic director in 2019.

19th and early 20th centuries
On October 21, 1858, a meeting was held at the Polytechnic Institute to measure support for establishing "a hall adapted to Musical, Literary, Scientific and other occasional purposes, of sufficient size to meet the requirements of our large population and worth in style and appearance of our city." The group applied to the New York State Legislature for a charter in the name of Brooklyn Academy of Music. The New York Legislature passed the bill to incorporate the Brooklyn Academy of Music on February 16, 1859. The group raised $60,000 by November 22 and another $90,000 by March 16, 1859. The Brooklyn Academy of Music opened on January 15, 1861.

At the inaugural address on the opening, the management announced that no dramatic performance should ever be held within its walls. The first concert opened with the overture to Der Freischütz, followed by arias and excerpts from various operas, including the William Tell Overture which opened part 2 of the concert.

Founded in 1861, the first BAM facility at 176–194 Montague Street in Brooklyn Heights was conceived as the home of the Philharmonic Society of Brooklyn. The building, designed by architect Leopold Eidlitz, housed a large theater seating 2,109, a smaller concert hall, dressing and chorus rooms, and a vast "baronial" kitchen. BAM presented amateur and professional music and theater productions, including performers such as Ellen Terry, Edwin Booth, and Fritz Kreisler. On her lecture tour of the United States in 1889-1890, Egyptologist and founder of the Egypt Exploration Society Amelia Edwards gave her first and last lectures here, in November and March, respectively.

After the building burned to the ground on November 30, 1903, plans were made to relocate to a new facility in the then fashionable neighborhood of Fort Greene. The cornerstone was laid at 30 Lafayette Avenue in 1906 and a series of opening events were held in the fall of 1908 culminating in a grand gala evening featuring Geraldine Farrar and Enrico Caruso in a Metropolitan Opera production of Charles Gounod's Faust. The Met presented seasons in Brooklyn, featuring star singers such as Caruso, until 1921.

It was also used for religious services during the early 1900s. Charles Taze Russell, founder of the bible students movement (now Jehovah's Witnesses and International Bible Students Association), gave sermons there the first Sunday of the month from 1908 until 1912.

1960s–1999
The Waltann School of Creative Arts (WSCA), founded in 1959, located at 1078 Park Place, Brooklyn, was a BAM venue during the 1960s and 1970s. One of the dance teachers there was African American contemporary dancer Carole Johnson, and the Eleo Pomare Dance Company performed there in 1967.

In 1967, Harvey Lichtenstein was appointed executive director and during his 32 years in that role, BAM experienced a turnaround, attracting audiences with new programming and establishing an endowment. BAM began hosting the annual Next Wave Festival in 1983, featuring performances by international and American artists. Humanities, education, and events for children take place throughout the year, plus first-run and repertory films and series.

The Chelsea Theater Center was in residence from 1967 to 1977.

From 1999 to 2015, Karen Brooks Hopkins was president, and Joseph V. Melillo was executive producer through 2018.

2000–present
A regular event was BAMcinemaFest, a festival focusing on independent films. Katy Clark was president from 2015 and left the institution in 2021.

People
Artists who have presented work at BAM include Philip Glass, Trisha Brown, Peter Brook, Pina Bausch, Merce Cunningham, Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company, Laurie Anderson, Lee Breuer, ETHEL, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Steve Reich, Seal, Mark Morris, Robert Wilson, Peter Sellars, BLACKstreet, Ingmar Bergman, David Van Tieghem, Michael Moschen, Twyla Tharp, Ralph Lemon, Ivo van Hove, and the Mariinsky Theater, directed and conducted by Valery Gergiev, among others.

American punk band Hole recorded their live album MTV Unplugged at the Academy on February 14th, 1995. Alice in Chains also recorded their live album Unplugged at the Academy on April 10, 1996 at the Majestic Theater (now the Harvey Theater) for ''MTV Unplugged. Alanis Morissette also recorded her live album MTV Unplugged at the Academy on September 18, 1999.

Facilities
The Peter Jay Sharp Building in the Fort Greene Historic District houses the Howard Gilman Opera House and the BAM Rose Cinemas (formerly the Carey Playhouse). It was designed by the firm Herts & Tallant in 1908, in the renaissance revival style. It is a U-shaped building with an open court in the center of the lot between two theater wings above the first story. The building has a high base of gray granite, with cream colored brick trimmed in terracotta with some marble detail above. The Howard Gilman Opera House has 2,109 seats and BAM Rose Cinemas, which opened in 1998, comprises four screens, and primarily shows first-run, independent and repertory films and series.

Also within the Peter Jay Sharp Building is the Lepercq Space, originally a ballroom and now a flexible event space which houses the BAMcafé, and the Hillman Attic Studio, a flexible rehearsal/performing space.

The BAM Strong, an array of spaces, includes the 874-seat BAM Harvey Theater at 651 Fulton Street. Formerly known as the Majestic Theater, it was built in 1904 with 1,708 seats and eventually showed vaudeville and then feature films, and was named in Lichtenstein's honor in 1999. A renovation by architect Hugh Hardy left the interior paint faded, with often exposed masonry, giving the theater a unique feel of a "modern ruin". In April 2014, CNN named the BAM Harvey as one of the "15 of the World's Most Spectacular Theaters". The complex also features a dedicated art gallery.

The BAM Fisher Building, opened in 2012, contains Fishman Space, a 250-seat black box theater, and Fisher Hillman Studio, a flexible rehearsal and performance space, as well as administrative offices. The BAM Hamm Archives are located off-site in Crown Heights at 1000 Dean St. and maintain the publicly accessible Levy Digital Archive.

The BAM Sharp and Fisher Buildings are located within the Brooklyn Academy of Music Historic District created by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission in 1978; the BAM Strong is not. BAM is adjacent to downtown Brooklyn, near Atlantic Terminal, the Barclays Center arena, and the Williamsburgh Savings Bank Tower (once the tallest building in Brooklyn). BAM is part of the Brooklyn Cultural District.

Notable productions

 * 2023: The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window by Lorraine Hansberry starring Oscar Isaac and Rachel Brosnahan
 * 2022: Cyrano by Edmond Rostand starring James McAvoy
 * 2020: Medea by Euripides starring Bobby Cannavale and Rose Byrne
 * 2016: The Judas Kiss by David Hare starring Rupert Everett
 * 2016: Richard II / Henry V by William Shakespeare starring David Tennant
 * 2014: King Lear by William Shakespeare starring Frank Langella
 * 2011:  Diary of a Madman by Nikolai Gogol starring Geoffrey Rush
 * 2008: Macbeth by William Shakespeare starring Patrick Stewart