Q’s With EMW Presents Partner & Co-Founder Max Roseff: Seeking The Best Venue For NYC’s Next Rave

Few markets in the live music space are as overwhelming as New York City. Music fans can see as many as three shows in a single night, criss-crossing the city to go from one venue to the next. With so many entertainment options, the city is a highly competitive place for promoters who are anxious to get fans in through the door and provide them with unique experiences.

Within the dance music space, that’s even more apparent. The genre dominates warehouses, with shows often taking place in Brooklyn and lasting until the sun rises. To captivate discerning audiences, independent promotion company EMW Presents (which stands for East Meets West) ventures out to find bespoke venues, throwing shows at a mechanic shop or synagogue, or at Brooklyn Army Terminal, which overlooks the edge of Manhattan.

The primary team overseeing EMW Presents consists of Thomas Turner, known for Arizona-based promotion company Relentless Beats, and Kevin Mitchell and Max Roseff, formerly of SFX and LiveStyle. They launched the company in 2023, building up its portfolio with events with Anjunabeats at Pier 17 in 2023, Chris Lake for two nights at Brooklyn Army Terminal in 2024, and Mochakk at Brooklyn Army Terminal in 2024. EMW Presents also made a major splash last September with Experts Only Festival, the John Summit-curated event that took place on Randall’s Island for two days. 

“We look for spaces that check a few boxes,” Roseff, partner and co-founder of EMW Presents tells Pollstar. “You want to be in a location that’s authentic to the space and that people talk about. It’s more of a social currency. You want to ditch the club routine and create a unique, communal atmosphere that’s more of a modern rave experience. When you’re looking at a raw space, that’s a blank canvas. You can be creative with lighting, projection mapping, and custom rigs. The goal is to find something that’s very intimate, and fosters a close connection between the DJ and the crowd.”

Roseff works with New York City to source venues and ensure everything is up to code. The task, while challenging, is rewarding, and ensures his events are ones to remember.

Pollstar: How do you find these spaces?
Max Roseff: The warehouse space is massive, but specifically movie studios that haven’t been used recently due to the strikes or a slow period in filming. Those are the traditionally cool spaces right now, because they have a lot of rigging capabilities and power infrastructure inside. It also warrants a more raw and authentic warehouse feel. But, you have a lot of the resources internally needed than if you were to go into the middle of nowhere, a desolate space, where you’d have to bring all that in from scratch.

Most of the time we find these bespoke venues online, looking at forums. There are a lot of forums and websites for blank spaces, discovery platforms for weddings, corporate events, bar mitzvahs, corporate gatherings – spaces that may not traditionally be used for electronic shows. And then we reach out to them, asking if they’d do a concert there. Most of the time, for the traditional spaces used for corporate events or other gatherings, there’s a strict curfew. To provide a better experience, you try to go outside the box and find a venue that’s more off the beaten path in a neighborhood where there won’t be the same sound or curfew restrictions.

Typically, we work with an architect and permit expeditor to ensure it’s all up to code. Safety is the number one priority. And the permit expediter works with the city to make sure we have the correct permits that deem the capacity. Fostering relationships with the city to get these permits comes down to the reputation of the promoter. How many shows have they done, what’s the history of the events they’ve done in the market. Another factor is the credibility of an address, [whether they have] electricity, city services attached. 

With a lot of these places, they’re flat rental rates. Depending on what the nature of their core business is, [if] it’s a movie studio, they’re displacing a film that day. But, because these are unique experiences, they also help bring attention to the spaces as well, and they’re open to creative deals. For a city-run property, they’re typically looking for a large amount of rent, because it’s not the nature of their core business to do events like this, and they’re looking for a premium. 

Do you always source these venues yourself, or does the artist tell you what they’re looking for?
Sometimes, if an artist has a tour and there’s a concept, like Tchami who often performs in a clerical collar, we found a synagogue in the Lower East Side from the early 1900s. They were looking to do a church for his tour, with church-style venues across the country. Because it was in a more public-centric area, we had to end at 10 p.m. There were noise restrictions, but it was a great show. Sometimes, we come to the artist with an idea. We pitch them a deck and then they love it, and the rest is history. We work with the artist team on more experiential elements, making it authentic to the artist, as well.