A bright new venue has blessed the shores of Brooklyn this summer. The Sultan Room, (associated with The Turk’s Inn) is the newest exploration in creative venues to open in Bushwick. The multi-room space features takeaway doner kebab, a sit-down restaurant (The Turk’s Inn), and a beautiful music room, The Sultan Room. It’s impeccably thought-out, well-designed for both sit-down shows and dance parties. One of the most obvious aspects of the space is its distinctive kitsch design. The venue is actually a resurrected 1930s-era Wisconsin supper club. The restaurant closed some years ago, and Varun Katarina and Tyler Erickson, the owners of the newly constructed Bushwick hotspot (and Wisconsin natives) bought the unique, brightly-colored artifacts at auction.
The vibe is somewhere between a kitschy, exotica take on Middle Eastern dining (through a Midwestern eye), and a ‘70s disco club. Bright colors and swirling lines abound, but the music programming is perhaps the most interesting part of the space. Booking experimental jazz, edge-blurring rock bands, world music, R&B, and more, they certainly fall well into the Brooklyn pan-genre embrace of musical panoply. There are two shows in August that I’m particularly excited for.
On August 14th, Billy Martin’s World Beats features drummer Martin (famously of Medeski, Martin, and Wood), along with Min Xiao-Fen, Shahzad Ismaily, and Shanir Ezra Blumenkranz. Xiao-Fen is a virtuosic pipa player, a traditional Chinese stringed instrument (perhaps most similar to the lute), who has collaborated with Björk and John Zorn, and has been prominent in incorporating the music into contemporary jazz and new music. Multi-instrumentalist Shahzad Ismaily has worked with people from Tom Waits to Will Oldham to John Zorn. Of Pakistani descent, he is always able to bring a multi-cultural musical perspective, crossing genres seamlessly. Shanir Ezra Blumenkranz is a bassist and oud player. These grouping of musicians is broad, and this show will be sure to present a fascinating meeting of minds.
On August 23rd, there is a “Summer Exotica Surf Party!” Really, this seems tailor-made for this unique music destination, and, quite frankly, a perfect NYC summer night! Frank LoCrasto will be playing music from his new album “Lost Dispatch”, which he describes as “getting lost in low-fi tones of the exoticized tropics.” Morricone Youth have been a NYC staple since the late 90s, dedicated to film music, both original and reinterpreted by them. Often, they perform with projections of films connected to the music they’re playing. And finally, the night will be blessed with the funky soul of Ryan Scott & the Kind Buds, whose new album, “A Freak Grows in Brooklyn,” kind of says it all.
The Sultan Room (https://thesultanroom.com) is located at 234 Starr Street in Bushwick.
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