How (Le) Poisson Rouge Went From Idea to Music Destination

David Handler embodies the classic line: “If you build it, they will come.”

After graduating from the Manhattan School of Music, the violinist and composer wasn’t happy with the spaces available for audiences to experience live classical music. “The costs were prohibitive, and the concert rituals were confusing — when am I allowed to cough?” he told Entrepreneur. “I realized there was a problem of packaging that was disassociating younger listeners from the music I had an almost religious devotion to. Not just classical music, but really ambitious deep listening kind of music.”

In 2008, he and classmate Justin Kantor founded (Le) Poisson Rouge, a music and multimedia art venue, in the spot that was once home to the legendary New York City jazz club The Village Gate. Since opening its doors, LPR has become known for hosting performances by boundary-pushing artists, as well as intimate shows from icons like Thom Yorke, Yo-Yo Ma, Lady Gaga, Iggy Pop, Lorde, Beck and Philip Glass.

Handler spoke with about how he turned his passion into a thriving business and offered his best advice for those who dream of bringing their artistic vision to life. (Answers have been edited for length and clarity.)

New York City has so many music venues. What did you feel was missing when you launched LPR?
The music that we now hear in concert halls used to be played in chambers that much more closely resembled a jazz club. The music was a living, breathing thing, and people were interacting with it in a different way. There was less pretension. At the time we decided to open LPR, it seemed like there was this reciprocal interest — art institutions needing more spontaneity and nightlife needing a little bit more substance. So I wrote a business plan to try and revive the arts and deepen late-night culture in New York City.

Singer-songwriter Julian Velard performs at LPR. (Photo Credit: LPR)

How did you get started writing your business plan?
I was 27 years old, and it was a tall order. I had never managed a bar, let alone opened a place. So in my pitch, I told would-be investors who were already donors to uptown institutions and said, “Look, I am a conservatory graduate, I have a finger on the pulse of what is also cool as a young person. If you give me a fraction of what you’re donating to Carnegie Hall or the Metropolitan Opera House, I will expand listenership and audience, and you might even see a return, which you will certainly never see from a donation.”

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How did you end up where the Village Gate once stood?
The Village Gate has a really illustrious cultural history. But in between the Gate and LPR, it was a nightclub called Life. And that caused a lot of problems. I basically had to bust out my violin at community board meetings to prove that I was not just a punk wanting to ruin the neighborhood. And along the way, we picked up a relationship with John Storyk, who designed Electric Lady Studios for Jimi Hendricks. When I told him I was going to do everything from metal to string quartets to drag bingo nights, he was down and decided to help create this space that we now know as LPR.

You were trained as a musician. What do you think gave you the confidence to pursue entrepreneurship?
I saw a gap. You hear people talk about sort of stumbling onto success or leading with your heart. That’s me. It was a mission that I was really passionate about, and it was very dear to me. I almost didn’t think of it as a business as much as a method of delivery or a way of spreading the gospel of the music and art I believed in. Before algorithms and recommendation engines, I made bespoke music mixes for friends. I had friends who listened to metal and they didn’t know Stravinsky. So I’d be like, “You can hear the same dissonance in the music you know in some of this new stuff.” That was exciting to me. A purely business-minded idea wouldn’t work for me because it exists only for that business end. This works because there’s so much passion behind it.

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Any moments that stand out to you as feeling like your plan was working?
I remember going down the line one night and speaking with someone who flew here from South America to see a show. And then right next to them was somebody who had no idea what they were in line to see. But because it was at LPR, and we earned their trust through some other night, they were like, “I don’t know this genre, but I’m going to give it a shot at LPR because I know that the standard is high.”

What would you advise to someone reading this who dreams of opening their own music or art venue?
There are a lot of location-specific logistics. In New York, for instance, some of the toughest stuff was getting a liquor license. And there’s this weird triangle of getting a liquor license and funding and signing a lease. You can’t sign a lease or get funding until you can sell liquor. And let’s face it, that’s where you’re going to make your money. If you don’t think you’re in the bar business by opening a music venue, you’re kidding yourself. And you can’t get a liquor license before you have a place to sell it. So there’s a lot of chicken-and-egg going on. But aside from logistics, I think it’s about having a clear, distilled-down vision of what the market needs and delivering it in an uncompromised way. But that doesn’t mean that you don’t evolve. We just partnered with KYD Labs to become one of the first major US venues to move all ticketing fully to blockchain technology. And always keep in mind what success means to you. I have to look at numbers for the business, but honestly, that’s not what guides me. It’s the deeper stuff in my life, in my family, in my own art and the artists we work with — those are the metrics that I want to live by.

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