A New Beginning & Name For A Legendary Venue Hosting Over 700 Diverse Performances Yearly

NEW YORK - Nov. 30, 2016 - PRLog -- The Cornelia Street Café is on the cusp of an important and perhaps lifesaving change.  The downstairs space, which hosts some 700 performances a year, will now be known formally as The Cornelia Street Underground, and will shelter under the capacious (and not-for-profit) wings of Fractured Atlas, which will allow it to receive tax-deductible donations to sustain its artistic mission.

For almost 40 years, the Cornelia Street Café has managed to produce what is perhaps the widest variety of performance in New York City without a penny of outside funding: Suzanne Vega sang her first songs in front of the cappuccino machine when the café was still one room; attorney-activist William Kunstler read the poetry of some of his famous clients (Dylan Thomas, for one) after the café expanded into the side room; in the mid-80's the café went "clean for Gene", turning the basement into a viable performance space for Senator and presidential candidate Eugene McCarthy to read his own poetry. This is where Eve Ensler fired the first volleys of her Vagina Monologues, neurologist Dr. Oliver Sacks read the first drafts of several of his autobiographies, where members of Monty Python & the Royal Shakespeare Company, as well as comedians Amy Schumer, John Oliver and Hannibal Buress have also performed.

The Underground continues to host more than 700 shows a year including a Science Series curated by Nobel Laureate Roald Hoffmann; a Philosophy Series curated by Joseph Biehl, President of the Gotham Philosophical Society; poetry and prose in more than a dozen languages; music in every conceivable genre from Jazz in all its forms to Classical, Avant-garde, Opera, Brazilian and Gypsy Music, and Southern Indian Carnatic Drumming; there is a freewheeling series featuring David Amram, who invented Jazz and Spoken Word with Jack Kerouac in the '50's and was Leonard Bernstein's first composer-in-residence at the NY Philharmonic in the '60's.  Upstairs in the two dining rooms there is a new art opening every month, showcasing artists in different kinds of visual media.

In addition, this award-winning West Village landmark is listed consistently among the 100 Greatest Jazz Clubs in the World by Downbeat Magazine, Jazz Venue of the Year by the New York City Jazz Record, one of the Top 100 Restaurants by Time Out NY, and is the recipient of the Waterford Crystal Award of Distinction for Best Wines-By-The-Glass Program.

If you look around the neighborhood where the Café is located, one thing is very noticeable – the high cost of doing business in New York has claimed many local establishments.  Soaring rent is changing the character and landscape of the Greenwich Village community, and the Café is equally vulnerable: its rent now 77 times what it was when it opened back in the summer of 1977.  As a result the Café's management has sought and received not-for-profit fiscal sponsorship from

Fractured Atlas. This means that the arts programming (which has an annual budget of approximately $500,000.00) can now accept tax-deductible contributions.  (For more on Fractured Atlas (http://www.fracturedatlas.org))

In 1987, on the eve of its 10^th Anniversary, then Mayor Koch, named the Café "a culinary as well as a cultural landmark" adding, "thanks to you, the tradition of the Greenwich Village coffeehouse remains alive and well."  Under the aegis of Fractured Atlas, the Cornelia Street Underground has the opportunity of remaining a permanent landmark and a reminder of what once was the thriving West Village arts community.

For more information visit

Cornelia Street Underground/Fractured Atlas, (https://www.fracturedatlas.org/site/fiscal/profile?id=150...)

Cornelia Street Cafe (http://www.corneliastreetcafe.com)