The Bowery Presents

Bowery Presents

Formation	1994
Location	New York City
Founders	Michael Swier and John Moore
Website	http://www.bowerypresents.com/

The Bowery Presents is a concert promotion and venue management organization that runs multiple venues in New York City, Boston, Philadelphia, Atlanta, and Maine. Venue capacities range from 250 people to 20,000 people. The organization started with only a small club (The Mercury Lounge) on Manhattan's Lower East Side in 1993 and gradually developed a new market for indie rock concerts for new middle-class populations in Manhattan and Williamsburg, Brooklyn, during the 1990s and 2000s, and in the 2010s increasingly also tourists and a wider area of New Jersey and Brooklyn.^[1]

History

The business evolution of The Bowery Presents:

• 1993 – The Mercury Lounge (250 capacity club), focus on baby bands
• 1997 – Bowery Ballroom (600 capacity club or small mid-size venue), headliner-oriented
• 2003 – Webster Hall (1400 capacity mid-size club), headliner-oriented
• 2006 – Live Nation's New York president Jim Glancy jumps over to become partner and contributes to the company's expansion by doing shows in larger venues with his long-term Live Nation artists and indie rock stars in venues such as Radio City Music Hall and Madison Square Garden
• 2007 – Music Hall of Williamsburg, another mid-size club that broadens the company's portfolio of venues creating an "internal" orbit in which they can promote artists at different career levels and in different neighborhoods
• 2007 – Terminal 5 (3000 capacity mid-size venue) in Midtown Manhattan
• 2008 – Wellmont Theatre (2000 capacity mid-sized theatre) in Montclair, NJ
• 2010 – Expansion into Boston
• 2013 – Wellmont Theatre leaves^[2]
• 2014 – Webster Hall leaves^[3]
• 2016 – AEG Live purchases Bowery Presents^[4]

Description

Bowery Ballroom, Webster Hall, and Music Hall of Williamsburg are widely appreciated for their excellent acoustics and for their historical aura. The buildings were constructed long before the gentrification process that shaped the outlook of the contemporary concert culture of mainstream indie rock at these venues and the concert market developed by The Bowery Presents, and the historical dimension of those venues is valuable to audiences and artists, both on the level of sensory pleasure but also on the level of authenticity in relation to the urban experience and the relatively retrospective indie rock.

The company was founded in 1993 by Michael Swier. In 2006, Bowery Presents partnered with former LiveNation CEO Jim Glancy,^[5] and began to expand to larger venues in New York such as Hammerstein Ballroom, and Madison Square Garden.^[6]

From 2010, the company began expanding to other places.

In 2016 it was reported that AEG Live has purchased Bowery Presents,^[4] leaving no multi-state independent concert promotion companies in New York City.

Venues

New York

• Mercury Lounge, the company's first venue, is a 250 capacity music venue in the lower east side of Manhattan in New York City.^[5]
• The Bowery Ballroom opened in 1998 in the lower east side of Manhattan, NY with a 575 capacity.^[6]
• The Music Hall of Williamsburg is a 550 capacity music venue in Brooklyn, NY. It opened in September 2007 at the site of the former Northsix Club.^[7]
• Terminal 5 opened in October 2007, after a multi-million dollar renovation by architect Brian Swier. With a capacity of 3,000, Terminal 5 will be Bowery Presents largest venue. "We've worked with these bands as they've grown, and we're thrilled to be able to provide a larger venue for them to play” stated founder, Michael Swier.^[8]

Bowery Boston

Bowery Presents moved to Boston, MA in April 2010 when the company signed a long-term deal with The Royale to be the sole presenter of live music at the nightclub/music venue. Bowery opened a small office in Boston to run the venue and to book events for larger spaces.^[9] Since 2010, Bowery has opened The Sinclair, and hired the two promoters of TT the Bear's and Great Scott.^[10] The promoters work in conjunction with Bowery Presents to bring events to Great Scott and TT the Bear's, as well as The Royale and The Sinclair.^[11]

• The Royale is a 1000 person capacity venue in downtown Boston, MA. It was the company's first space outside of the New York region.^[9]
• The Sinclair is a live-music venue and restaurant launched in the winter of 2013 in Cambridge. The live music space accommodates 525 people with plans to host 200 shows annually, while the restaurant will seat 104 and will be open seven days a week.^[12] The Sinclair is the first restaurant that the company will work with.^[13]
• Great Scott is a venue in Allston, MA with a capacity of about 240 people.^[14]

Others

• Union Transfer, opened originally in 1889 as the Spring Garden Farmer's Market,^[15] is a live music and entertainment venue in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. After going through several changes over the years, the venue was renovated through a joint venture between R5 Productions, Four Corners Management, and The Bowery Presents in 2011.^[16] At capacity, it holds up to about 1100 for standing room. It is independently owned and operated.^[17]
• State Theatre is a historic live music venue in downtown Portland, Maine. Opened in the winter of 1929, the theatre has been host to several acts.^[18] It reopened in 2010 after an agreement to renovate the property between Alex Crothers from Higher Ground in Burlington, Vermont and The Bowery Presents.^[19] At capacity, it holds between 1,450 and 1,610 patrons.^[20]

References

External links

• Official website