Sag Harbor’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve

For Bryan Downey, a photographer, singer-songwriter, and restoration contractor who lives in Sag Harbor, musicians, artists, photographers, and poets on the South Fork were missing something important. That, he said, was a central hub that could serve as a cultural center for performers and audiences alike.

On New Year’s Eve, that will change. Soon after a recent post on Facebook, in which Mr. Downey, a native of Liverpool, England, mused about such a space, his idea came to life. Gerald Mallow, owner of the Sag Harbor Cinema, offered his 480-seat theater for an 11-hour marathon of performances and exhibition of artwork. It is the inaugural event of the Sag Harbor Arts Group.

On Wednesday at 8 a.m., the cinema will open, with coffee and bagels from SagTown Coffee, for early arrivals. All day, visual art, sculpture, and photography will be on display in the cinema’s lobby, and from noon until the event’s 7 p.m. finish, musicians and poets will perform original works on the stage. Old, black and white movies will be shown, as well as “Reel Montauk,” a documentary directed by John Barrett.

At 8 and 10 p.m. there will be another first for the cinema: a stand-up comedy triple bill with Butch Bradley, Marla Schultz, and Matt McCusker. Tickets are $30, $50, and a $90 V.I.P. package.

Also to be shown is an unedited interview with Carl Darenberg, a well-known Montauk resident who died in September. Mr. Downey plans a moment of silence for Mr. Darenberg.

Mr. Downey, who founded the Hamptons Singer-Songwriters collective and Bulldog Studios, a Sag Harbor recording studio, in 2009, said that he knows most of the musicians and artists on the South Fork. “I know the standard of the community,” he said of them. “These amazing musicians are coming — Black and Sparrow, Inda Eaton, Fred Raimondo.” Kerry Kearney, a guitarist, “is coming all the way from Breezy Point, in Queens,” he said.

“I am interested in people that have never been on stage before,” Mr. Downey added, “songwriters that have never been in front of people, because that energy is incredible, when you see someone so nervous.” Poets, he said, will perform “beatnik style,” backed by a jazz trio. “It may throw them off a bit,” he allowed, but they will be permitted to read their work from prepared pages.

Mr. Mallow is no stranger to cultural events outside the realm of cinema. He has been putting on art shows for 38 years, he said, and first organized a jazz concert in 1979, with the late saxophonist Hal McKusick. “This is nothing new to me,” Mr. Mallow said. “The only thing new is Bryan. He’s spending a lot of time and a lot of work doing it, and I think he does it for the love of art.”

The event, Mr. Mallow said, “should be a nice way to bring in the New Year. There should be a lot of local people, so that’s a nice thing to do, not everybody isolated in different little parties.” He said that he hopes to stage future events such as comedy shows and art exhibitions, which would number at least one per month.

Admission to the event will be $12, $2 of which will be donated to Peconic Public Broadcasting’s WPPB radio station.