PAC NYC, a $500-million performance space at the World Trade Center, opens tonight. Since classical music plays a fairly minimal role in its programming, I won't be covering it. I do wonder, though, what purpose the venue really serves, aside from giving billionaires another opportunity to congratulate themselves on their largesse. Does PAC NYC fill a need not already satisfied by Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Park Avenue Armory, the Shed, etc.? Might the half-billion dollars have better been invested in extant performing-arts organizations? Laurie Anderson, who is performing during the opening week, struck an appropriately skeptical tone in an interview with the New York Times: “Sometimes a place opens and it never finds its audience. I always like it when it’s opened up to the people who live in the neighborhood, but nobody lives in that neighborhood — it’s mostly abandoned offices now. So how do you make a community out of a bunch of empty offices? We’ll see. Maybe you make it by bringing music that’s just so incredible that everybody wants to get on the subway and go down there. That would be great.” Whether a revival of Cats will meet that standard remains to be seen.
