Tonic

Overview

A former kosher winery on Norfolk Street that became the downtown avant-garde's anchor for nine years, giving musicians 75 percent of the door, running nightly programming, and keeping wine-cask booths in the basement. Gentrification's rent increases forced it shut in April 2007, after a closing protest that ended in arrests.

Tonic occupied a narrow three-story brick building at 107 Norfolk Street that had housed the Kedem Kosher Winery from roughly 1937 until the operation closed in 1997. Owners Melissa Caruso Scott and John Scott opened the music venue in March 1998, with Ted Reichman bringing over a weekly experimental series he had been running at alt.coffee to anchor early programming. The space was deliberately unglamorous (exposed brick, makeshift card-table stages, plumbing prone to flooding) and the upstairs stage placed performers within arm's length of the audience. By 2000 Tonic was presenting more than 300 shows annually and, crucially, paying musicians 75 percent of the door, a policy that drew artists who could find no comparable room in the city. Alan Licht took over as booker and curator in 2000, deepening the venue's connections to the downtown noise, free-jazz, and new-music communities. John Zorn, though never a founder or owner, became Tonic's central champion. Weeks after opening he approached the Scotts to propose a one-week 'New Music Festival' featuring downtown jazz figures including Tim Berne, Bobby Previte, Ravi Coltrane, and Joe Lovano; the run was extended to two months on the strength of its response, and Zorn remained a primary curator and headliner through the venue's life, releasing the double-LP Masada: Live at Tonic 2001 on his Tzadik label as one of dozens of documented recordings from the room. Other artists associated with Tonic's programming include Marc Ribot, Cecil Taylor, Yoko Ono, Medeski Martin & Wood (who recorded the live album Tonic there in March 1999), Sonic Youth members in various configurations, Thurston Moore, Milford Graves, Fred Frith, Christian Marclay, Vijay Iyer, Sylvie Courvoisier, Ned Rothenberg, and an early Animal Collective. The basement, known informally as subTonic, retained the original kosher winery's 2,500-gallon oak casks, several of which were converted into semi-private booths; a DJ booth was built from halved wine barrels. Beginning in 2003, Bryan Kasenic (DJ Spinoza) ran The Bunker, a techno and experimental-electronic night whose name derived from the dark, vault-like atmosphere below, as a Friday party that grew steadily through 2006 and incorporated both floors as it expanded. The NYPD shuttered the basement in February 2007, citing seven years of unpermitted operation; the Bunker relocated to Galapagos in Brooklyn and later to Public Assembly. Tonic faced a near-fatal financial crisis in early 2005 requiring emergency fundraising of roughly $100,000 after a confluence of rent increases, insurance costs, theft, and a mandatory sewer upgrade; the venue survived through benefit shows and donations. Two years later the economics had decisively shifted: surrounded by the Blue Condominium (105 Norfolk, completed 2007) and the Switch Building (109 Norfolk), Tonic's monthly rent had doubled to approximately $10,000 and arrears had accumulated past that amount. The final show was held April 13, 2007, an evening of improvisation curated by Zorn followed by a last Bunker set. The following afternoon, April 14, more than a hundred musicians and fans gathered at the padlocked entrance for a protest organized by TakeItToTheBridge, a federation of avant-garde musicians; Marc Ribot finished playing the labor anthem 'Bread and Roses' before police arrested him and violinist Rebecca Moore for trespassing. City Councilmember Alan Gerson pledged to propose property-tax abatement legislation for music venues. John Zorn had opened The Stone, a non-profit artist-curated room on Avenue C, in April 2005 (two years before Tonic's closure) as a deliberate extension of the same ethos. The building at 107 Norfolk subsequently housed the Lisa Cooley Gallery and, as of 2023, was being converted to a high-end Japanese omakase restaurant.

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