Multi-purpose art and music space Prototype 237 launches weekend residency program with Joy on Fire concert this Saturday
Prototype 237, in its fifth year of live-work-DIY operations in Paterson, NJ, is launching a weekend-residency program where the jazz-rock band Joy on Fire will get a crack at multiple performance and recording opportunities.
It starts on Friday, May 16 with a house dinner and rehearsal for the weekend’s participants, among them engineers, videographers and the venue’s handful of residents.
Joy on Fire, a trio that splits their time between Trenton, NJ and NYC, stays at the venue for the weekend.
Scheduled activities include a Saturday podcast recording and other audio/video productions, a high-quality recording of their live Saturday night concert, open to the ticket-paying public ($15), and a Sunday full-day recording session in the Prototype studio. The weekend concludes with another public wrap-party on Sunday night, entry included with the Saturday ticket.
The venue plans to have four residencies this year, with two more bands scheduled for July: This Holy Rodeo (Philadelphia) and Party Girl (Brooklyn). Those three acts plus a fourth to-be-determined will contribute to a Prototype compilation album of sorts, with the bands also keeping their weekend material to operate with themselves.
Said Prototype co-founder and creative director Alex Pergament this week of the compilation aspect, “We'll take a few songs each of the studio-recording sessions, add a song from each band from the live session, and then make a compilation album for the year's residencies. We're going to have live and studio recording versions of each [of the four bands]. And then we'll have some video that they can use to promote, that kind of stuff too.”
Joy on Fire will also be using the recording for an album they're putting out separately, Perrgament said.
Rob Badenoch is this weekend’s audio engineer, while Evan Criscuolo is handling photography and videography.
Each of the three bands signed up so far carries a jazz-ethic, a format that Pergament said fits the whole residency operation well.
“[Prototype is] really good at live recording, and I think that's the heart of jazz recording. Unlike kind of rock or pop, where you're doing track by track, by track,” he said.
“For the most part, the jazz-ethic folks want to record live. I love that and I think that that's really my favorite part of the thing.”
He sees the genre as growing. His own band of a few years, Thieves in Paris, is opening for Joy on Fire on Saturday night, though isn’t part of the compilation aspect.
“Jazz-fusion has been done for a long time, but there's a bunch of young kids doing fusion stuff. And then some blues stuff, and then the other weird iterations. My band's kind of folky-jazz, Joy on Fire is like punk-jazz. I think it's really broad.”
The music embodies the setting: “Lots of room for improvisation, which is a big ethic for Prototype, a founding ethic for Prototype. Collaboration, improvisation, I think those are really the big things about it.”
Later this year, in September, Prototype 237 will be throwing its fifth-anniversary party and concert, to be hosted by comedian Chris Gethard. The whole building will be open for open studios, with events like dance and yoga classes, movie screenings, and of course live music.
Pergament posted an open call this week for participants, if people want to do stuff for an hour or so in one of their spaces.
“We have four floors now,” Pergament said of their garment factory building backed up by the Passaic River. “We've been growing pretty quick. Got a black box theatre and podcast area on one floor, white-walled gallery space and chef’s kitchen on another floor, with a pool table and stuff. And then, the fifth floor” where the bands play, “And then we have kind of a VIP/residential area too.”
For more information, visit the event page at prototype237.com/events or follow the space on Instagram @prototypepaterson.
