Brooklyn Mirage Parent Company Avant Gardner Finally Files for Bankruptcy

By Michael Gonik

The show most certainly will not be going on at Brooklyn Mirage this summer (or any subsequent season, for that matter).

According to Bloomberg, Avant Gardner, the venue’s parent company, officially filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy this morning, a move no one at all could have seen on the horizon. The filing, which states Avant Gardner has a “significant liquidity crisis” with $155 million in debt obligations, confirms a good deal of the chatter you might have seen on these pages and others over the last few months—from AG reportedly “bleeding money” since failing to launch Brooklyn Mirage on May 1 to its flagship venue scrapping the 2025 season in its entirety. The company reportedly intends to sell off a portion of its live music complex—which includes Brooklyn Mirage, The Great Hall, and Avant Gardner’s namesake space—to one of its lenders, and hold an auction for its other assets.

The news arrives after three months of shows quietly postponed, relocated, or cancelled altogether, forcing ticketholders to hawk the Brooklyn Mirage calendar as it grew emptier by the day. For their part, Avant Gardner and Brooklyn Mirage have not offered a public statement since the cancellation of Mirage’s Memorial Day weekend programming. Since then, performances from Peggy Gou, Black Coffee, Toro y Moi, and countless others have been moved or axed outright.

It’s unclear how the company moves forward beyond the auction of its assets or whether the venues it owns will find new buyers in the months ahead, but, hopefully, when it’s done repaying its backers, Gardner will turn its attention to squaring up with the fans still gripping their stubs for shows that never happened.