Downtown music

The scene the term describes began in 1960, when Yoko Ono, one of the early Fluxus artists, opened her loft at 112 Chambers Street, in a part of Lower Manhattan later named Tribeca, to be used as a performance space for a series curated by La Monte Young and Richard Maxfield.

Prior to this, most classical music performances in New York City occurred "uptown" around the areas that the Juilliard School at Lincoln Center and Columbia University would soon occupy.

[1] Spaces in Manhattan that supported Downtown music from the 1960s on include the Judson Memorial Church, The Kitchen, Phill Niblock's Experimental Intermedia Foundation, La Monte Youngs Mela Foundation, Dia Art Foundation, Harvestworks, Roulette, the Knitting Factory, ABC No Rio, Dance Theater Workshop, Tonic, the Gas Station, Tellus Audio Cassette Magazine, the Paula Cooper Gallery, and others.

In chronological order of dominance, the following movements have been prominent Downtown: The above list of movements and idioms is far from exhaustive – in particular, it omits the continuous history of electronics in Downtown music, which have tended toward process-oriented and interactive music rather than fixed compositions.

Nyman opposes the term to avant-garde, as generally being American/British versus Continental, experimental music being more open to process, surprises, and accidents and less focused on the artistic personality.