Text by Sohrab Saadat Ladjevardi
The Vision Festival, which was initiated by dancer and choreographer Patricia Nicholson Parker in 1996, has established itself as one of the world’s top festival of experimental music, free jazz/avant-garde jazz, art, film and dance. It is run under the tutelage of Arts For Art, Inc. (AFA).
Inspired by the 1984 and ’88 Sound Unity Festivals, it was a direct out growth of the Improvisers Collective 1994 and ’95. Every year this festival is held in New York City in June. Members of the board of directors include following people.
Every year the festival takes place in numerous New York venues. It usually consists of between thirty and sixty performances, spread out over a number of days. But this year the main venue is the Roulette in Brooklyn. During all the years the festival has encountered difficulty booking performance spaces, largely because of the Vision Festival’s rejection of commercial sponsors. Booking difficulties are often fixed by arts-foundation grants, however.
