I am sad to announce that The Super Coda will no longer operate out of Cafe Orwell. Unfortunately the sound situation has become completely untenable at the venue, and I can no longer in good conscience work under the current circumstances.
I will be working with several venues throughout the city to ensure that every show that has been booked for the upcoming months unfolds as it should.
I will continue posting on this page so you can follow where the music moves.
Thank you to everyone that helped me build such a rich, wonderful, exciting community of music and performance over the past 2 years.
I’m shocked by the circumstances that arose, but excited by the prospect of having a mobile series for a spell. New experiences, acoustics, neighborhoods, anything but the insidious same….
I encourage everyone involved with The Super Coda, performers and audience alike, to join me in an open discussion about the creative music community and the steps we can take to strengthen it. (Email me, valeriekuehne@gmail.com)
Funny, how in the same day I learned of Kevin Shea’s beating by the son of the owner of University of the Streets – I was presented with an ultimatum of my own as concerns the venue where I’d chosen to let my series grow.
Is it possible to run a business without all desire becoming financial? Is it possible to engineer a sustainable creative music community in NYC? The NYC business model is completely absurd insofar as it’s built to not last, to instead foster transience and a turnover rate that’s singular to this City’s infrastructure and allure. Ultimately this probably doesn’t matter. We are not business people. All we need is for our art, and the desire to make it, to survive.
So the point I really want to make here is incredibly sensitive and important to anyone who makes creative music and art in this city. How much are we willing to sacrifice in order to have just a few hours a day to work on our art, let alone present it to an audience? It seems to me that I was willing to sacrifice my own worth and dignity as a curator, as well as my own ethical principles as to how neighbors should treat each other on a daily basis in order for The Super Coda to simply CONTINUE.
I’m certain a blind desire of this sort applies to everyone that plays creative music in this city. Whether it’s by enduring absurd cover splits at venues, working behind a bar/waiting tables, asphyxiating creative energy in order to create the idea of just a bit more, living in squalor and hardly considering it so long as you have an opportunity to perform, busking in the streets because this is the only viable alternative for actually making money exclusively playing music in this city…
How much are we willing to sacrifice in order to simply continue creating? And should this even matter? Does this make us more human? Or are we simply fools, open again and again to be taken advantage of? I’m not suggesting we get angry. I just think we must cultivate a stronger awareness of when the first edifice applies, and when the second. And then we can gauge how valuable our art is, and our reasons for creating it, and sacrificing, within this spectrum. Our work will be ALL THE BETTER FOR IT.

In any case it comes to pass that at a certain point, what we’re doing just no longer works, and what grows unhealthy must be left alone. Dying animals, lashing out at the hand that’s only ever wanted to assist…making coffee.

So yes. I encourage you to find the Super Coda on Facebook, (if you haven’t already), and share your past experiences with our events, your hopes for the future of creative music, and of course your work! The desire to share and be generous is certainly a place where freedom exists.

Thank you all for reading. Please help me spread the word about the Super Coda moving above and beyond.

Let’s keep the surprises coming.

Love and respect,

Valerie