Brooklyn Academy of Music

Brooklyn Academy of Music performing arts center located in the borough of Brooklyn, N.Y. and popularly known as BAM. Founded in 1859 and opened in 1861, it is the oldest such institution still in operation in the United States. It moved to its neo-Italianate building in downtown Brooklyn in 1907. The Academy presently has four major performance areas-the Opera House, the Playhouse, the Leperq space, and the BAM Rose Cinemas. The Academy has long presented concerts, plays, ballet, and lectures, and it is now home to the Brooklyn Philharmonic. Since 1967 it has expanded into a center for experimental theater, new opera, contemporary and ethnic music and dance, independent films, and multimedia productions. An avant-garde showplace, it is also the venue for the artistically adventurous Next Wave Festival, an annual 10-week series of events that originated in 1981.

Brooklyn Academy of Music (New York) BAM, as it is usually referred to, was America's first multitheatre arts center. It was built in 1908 on the ashes of a previous theatre and was designed by Henry Herts with four performance spaces for theatre and concerts. After a checkered history that included concerts and plays by the world's greatest artists, as well as derelict days, the complex was turned into a nonprofit arts center to help revive downtown Brooklyn in the 1980s. Today it houses the 2,000‐seat Howard Gillman Opera House, the 1,847‐seat Harvey Lichtenstein Theatre, and the 550‐seat Lepercq Space, as well as the faded old Majestic Theatre down the street. Under the direction of Lichtenstein, who started running the center in 1967, BAM is an active and prestigious home to visiting groups and, since 1983, the site of the celebrated Next Wave Festival each fall.