Paola Prestini, the creative and executive director of National Sawdust, stood in the space’s balcony one recent afternoon, looking over what would soon be a bustling concert hall. “The speakers just came in,” she said cheerfully, pointing at a rig hanging from the ceiling, still in its filmy protective covering. A geometric metal framework crisscrossed the room’s far wall, next to the hydraulic platforms that will make for a flexible stage.
National Sawdust, a nonprofit performance space, recording facility and creative hub in the shell of a century-old sawdust factory in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, opens on Oct. 1. It will be a significant addition to the musical landscape in New York — at least for a broadly defined constellation of artists working in the zone where compositional form, improvisational technique and global or technological savvy find ways to converge.
