The Powerhouse: International festival launching this fall at Powerhouse Arts (322 3rd Ave, Brooklyn), features large-scale performance works from around the world and includes a series of concerts by some of today’s most boundary-pushing musicians. Produced in a venue purpose-built for art and connection, the festival transforms the awe-inspiring Powerhouse Arts facility, a former power plant, into a charged meeting ground. For Powerhouse: International’s concert programming, a diversity of vanguard musicians are offered an expansive, flexible hall in which they can conceive the audience’s experience around their music and push the boundaries of the concert form.
Multiple artists will perform as part of the Red Hot Presents TRAИƧA — A Live Experience lineup on Saturday, December 6th, 2025, stemming from the activist and music production nonprofit’s album spotlighting many of the most daring and imaginative trans and non-binary artists working today. Artists announced so far include Ahya Simone, Anajah, Asher White, Benét, Bloomsday, Joy Guidry, Kaye Loggins (Time Wharp), More Eaze, and Nsámbu Za Suékama.
Moor Mother, an artist who “threads connections between past, present, and future in a sensory overload fusing industrial noise, ‘witch rap,’ and free jazz” (Pitchfork), will perform in-the-round as part of a double bill with Pussy Riot Siberia, fronted by formerly imprisoned dissident artist Nadya Tolokonnikova on Tuesday, December 2nd. The festival also features concerts from iconoclast and leader of the Japanese band Boredoms, EYE, in his first solo US performance as part of a double bill lineup on Friday, December 5th with aya—also making her US live debut—whose recent album, Hexed, Pitchfork called “one of the best, most unhinged albums of the year”.
The festival concludes on Saturday, December 13th with a joyous, breathless celebration as internationally acclaimed choreographer, dancer, and creative force Amari Marshall’s The Imagining invites audiences and artists onto the dance floor for an evening of artistic catharsis.
Powerhouse: International’s music series is curated by adventurous producer Adam Shore. The series is part of the larger festival conceived and curated by Tony Award-winning producer and artistic director David Binder. Across the festival, music, theatre, dance, and genre-defying works become acts of connection, where artists and audiences move through each other’s rhythms, stories, and forms. Powerhouse Arts—with its graffiti-clad walls, vibrant artistic community, and ethos of radical possibility—is the perfect home for a festival rooted in artistic freedom, experimentation, and bold response in a moment that demands nothing less.
As opportunities for cultural exchange diminish and division overtakes cultural dialogue, Powerhouse: International offers a haven for endangered ideas. Its music programming features artists rigorously challenging what a concert can be and building new worlds of sound. Unconventional arrangements bringing audiences and artists into closer proximity exemplify how Powerhouse: International forges a new site of engagement.
“So often, artists’ shows have to fit into a venue, but here, the venue can be made to fit the show”, shares Adam Shore. “This music series is breaking the idea of what a venue can be. Artists who are not normally invited to these rarified spaces but should be, are given the opportunity to reimagine how they want to present their work.”
Considering how many audience members will be coming to Powerhouse Arts for the first time, Shore adds, “When you can bring New Yorkers into spaces they’ve never been to before, it opens a concert up into a collective experience in a way that’s so different than, ‘here’s your assigned seat, sit down, be passive, accept the performance we’ve provided for you, and leave.’ I can’t wait to see people walk into this room for the first time, because everyone’s going to immediately see how special what they’re about to encounter is. We get the rare opportunity to bring people into a new space for the first time every single night. It’s so exciting.”
“What Adam is doing with the music series is precisely what I envisioned for the festival as a whole: pushing boundaries, breaking norms, and inviting everyone to the party”, adds David Binder.
“Powerhouse Arts envisions creative expression as central to personal and civic development”, comments Eric Shiner, President of Powerhouse Arts. “This festival brilliantly extends that vision by turning our building into a home where artists generate new possibilities and extend Brooklyn’s legacy as a crucible for cultural transformation.”
CONCERT PERFORMANCE SCHEDULE:
Moor Mother + Pussy Riot Siberia
December 2nd, 2025 | Doors 8pm, Show 8:30pm
Moor Mother’s music traverses Black history and Afrofuturism through jazz, poetry, hip-hop and noise. She debuts her newest creation—a ferocious soul/blues/punk band performing live for the first time ever, as part of an explosive double bill with Pussy Riot Siberia. Fronted by Nadya Tolokonnikova, globally recognized for her protest against authoritarianism, this new project exists at the intersection of performance art, noise, and visual art, a raw action about life in exile, war, and the continuing struggle for rights for women and LGBTIQ+ people around the world.
EYE (AV Show) / aya (AV Show)
December 5th, 2025 | Doors 8pm, Show 8:30pm
EYE, the Japanese vocalist and composer best known for leading the wildly experimental and innovative band Boredoms, makes his U.S. solo debut with an overpowering AV show by C.O.L.O. This is part of a double bill with UK artist aya, whose recent album Hexed was described by Pitchfork as “one of the best, most unhinged albums of the year,” performing live in the U.S. for the first time.
Red Hot Presents TRAИƧA — A Live Experience
December 6th, 2025 | Doors 7:30pm, Show 8pm
Storied activist collective Red Hot—creators of legendary compilations like Red Hot + Blue and Dark Was the Night—brings TRAИƧA, their most ambitious project yet, to Powerhouse Arts. This intergenerational album centers trans and non-binary performers in collaboration with a massive cohort of diverse voices. In a rare live assembly of the Transa community, the evening unfolds through potent, genre-defying performances that fuse queer joy, radical imagination, and spiritual urgency. This isn’t just a concert, it’s a collective invocation.
Including Ahya Simone, Anajah, Asher White, Benét, Bloomsday, Joy Guidry, Kaye Loggins (Time Wharp), More Eaze, Nsámbu Za Suékama, and more to be announced.
The Imagining
Amari Marshall
December 13th, 2025 | Doors at 9pm, Show at 10pm
One night. Nothing held back. Everyone in.
Amari Marshall—who has created iconic movement for Beyoncé, Missy Elliott, and Rihanna—brings her own signature movement ritual to Powerhouse Arts. This living, breathing celebration brings the dance artists that inspire Marshall onto the floor with audiences.
Featuring Ladies of Hip-Hop, Lolita Leopard, Jore Marshall, and Tany Ora, plus DJs Alberto Reyes, Vonnie Mack, and Tim Fields, and many more.
For more information and tickets head to https://powerhouseinternationalfestival.org.
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