5 Questions to Paola Prestini (Co-Founder and Artistic Director, National Sawdust)
on February 9, 2021 at 6:00 am
Though Google Maps currently marks Brooklyn’s National Sawdust venue as closed, this fertile ground for artistic exploration is anything but in hibernation. Opened in 2015 thanks to the efforts of attorney and organist Kevin Dolan and composer Paola Prestini, the former sawdust-factory-turned-contemporary-music-haven has just announced its Winter/Spring 2021 season, featuring a cornucopia of creative work from a stylistically rich cohort of composers, choreographers, poets, instrumentalists, dancers, and filmmakers.
Furthering its mission as an incubator for young artists’ careers, a new partnership with New York University’s Center for Ballet and the Arts and the Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation joins National Sawdust’s stellar lineup of fellowship programs, including the Hildegard Commission and the BluePrint Fellowship; and Beth Morrison Projects returns this season with Liederabend Op. World Wide, commissioning international composers to reinterpret the nineteenth-century tradition of Germanic art song for piano.