If you ever find yourself in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, you must visit a new experimental venue that nurtures contemporary music. It’s called the  National Sawdust, a nonprofit performance space and recording facility which used be an old sawdust factory. 
The founder is Kevin Dolan, a former senior vice president and general tax counsel at Merrill Lynch & Co. Kevin, also an accomplished organist, is my neighbor in Miami Beach.

A few weeks ago Kevin told  me that a few of the artists from The National Sawdust were performing at an Art Basel party at the Wolfsonian Museum sponsored by Vanity Fair magazine. The list included: Glenn Kotche, formerly with the band Wilco; Jeffrey Zeigler, formerly with the Kronos Quartet; Magos Herrera, a Latin jazz artist and Helga Davis, singer  who toured last year on the Philip Glass’s Einstein on the Beach. 

We were invited to attend and I got to include a few friends.

Kevin with Eliot

Art Basel crowd. lined up outside behind velvet ropes to get in.

One of the many National Sawdust performers.

On loan from National Sawdust

Howard, Ruth, Elliott, Mindi, Eliot and me.

Creative Guests

Steve with other guests who wanted to cause a stir.

Williams takes a turn

Group shot

Mixing in with the crowd

Ruth and Howard

Mindi and Elliott