In The Williamsburg Avant-Garde, Cisco Bradley chronicles the rise and fall of the underground music and art scene in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn between the late 1980s and the early 2010s. Building on the neighborhood's punk DIY approach and aesthetic, Williamsburg's free jazz, post-punk, and noise musicians and groups produced shows in a variety of unlicensed venues as well as in clubs and cafes. At the same time, pirate radio station free103point9 and music festivals made Williamsburg an epicenter of New York's experimental culture. In 2005, New York's rezoning act devastated the community as gentrification displaced its participants farther afield in Brooklyn, Queens, and beyond. With this portrait of Williamsburg, Bradley not only documents some of the most vital music of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, he offers thoughts on the formation, vibrancy, and life span of experimental music and art scenes everywhere. The book talk will be followed by a performance by musicians who were a part of the Williamsburg scene who now live in the Hudson Valley.