Central Park SummerStage
212-360-1399
As Fred Sanford would exclaim, “This is the big one!” The biggest venue with the biggest crowds, garlanded by the big but largely benign ghosts of concerts, plays, and film shoots past (see an “out of focus” Robin Williams at the Bethesda Fountain in Woody Allen’s Deconstructing Harry for one indelible example). Ranging across genres with the alacrity of a jumping frog, among this season’s highlights is the free June 4 opening night featuring jazz (ex-Miles Davis) and R&B legend Marcus Miller, with two New Orleans-based groups, the funk band Tank and the Bangas, and thrilling brass ensemble, The Soul Rebels opening.
June 25 brings a free performance by Rhiannon Giddens, founding member of the Carolina Chocolate Drops, a fantastic musician instrumental in reclaiming banjo, fiddle, and guitar-based folk music as the uniquely American fusion of the Black and other music they most often were.
Conversely, the free June 30 bill titled “New York Sings Yiddish” is both the exception and the rule to the above. Very few Eastern European singers and musicians could have known African-American or any African-derived music in the late 19th century, when they began to emigrate en masse to the United States, so the further back you go, the more purely Yiddish things get. Zalmen Mlotek, the Bronx-born expert performer of Yiddish music, can explain it much greater detail. Frank London’s Klezmer All-Stars, who are also on the bill, exemplify both the vitality and flexibility of Yiddishkeit roots—some of which grow into jazz! As for what comes after jazz, the free Aug. 16 Blacktronika Festival (dedicated to Afrofuturism in Electronic Music) will offer numerous examples.
Lincoln Center Festival Orchestra
Lincoln Center’s Summer for the City
June 11 to Aug. 19
212-501-3100
Remember Mostly Mozart? Classical music lovers around the world do and they still wear the few T-shirts and the buttons and cherish the festival programs that prove it. Then, after 50-plus years, for reasons never coherently explained, Lincoln Center killed Mostly Mozart in 2023. For some Mozarteans, the ironies, and sorrows, of Lincoln Center performing such a senseless act—murdering one of their best known, most admired brands, one that honors a musical genius whose art remains internationally beloved—brought to mind events at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, DC on April 14, 1865. Thankfully for New Yorkers, things weren’t quite that bad, and instead of President Andrew Johnson, we were given the talented but blandly named Lincoln Center Festival Orchestra instead. And, really, don’t blame the band, or its conductor and artistic director, Jonathon Heyward. Were they able to speak freely, it’s certain they’d love to play more Mozart, and play more music, old and new, comforting and challenging, than the powers that be, benighted by dreams of trend-chasing popularity, allow them. So, thank you, Lincoln Center Festival Orchestra: Your work and passion are much admired—from Mozart to Clara and Robert Schumann to Shostakovich to Habibi. If only there were more of it, and awesome pins and T-shirts too.
The Rooftop at Pier 17
South Street at Fulton Street
646-822-6990
Down on the East River, very near the docks where the monster surfaced in the classic 1953 post-atomic-testing thriller The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms, is one of the city’s most stunning music venues: Pier 17. And so, with the Brooklyn Bridge looming in one direction and South Street Seaport and the Financial District in another, these are some of the concerts one can enjoy this summer, starting on May 13 with the pan-stylistic Ben Harper, whose music ranges across numerous folk, blues, and soul-related idioms. June 3 brings the improbably long-lasting, ’60s-inspired British indie rockers The Kooks to town, while two days later, the energetic country-pop songwriter from Tennessee, Russell Dickerson, appears for a stop on his cleverly named “Russellmania” tour. Whatever the weather may be on July 23, the stage at Pier 17 will be scorching when heat-acclimated New Orleans hero Trombone Shorty and Jacksonville, Fla., blues rocker J.J. Mofro hit the boards. Two days later, Southern rock heroes the Drive-By Truckers headline, with the unfortunately named Deer Tick and inspired, all-female, and queer, Thelma & The Sleaze opening. Deadheads won’t want to miss the Dark Star Orchestra Aug. 15, while those interested in the folk roots of the Grateful Dead ought not to miss West Virginia native Sierra Ferrell’s inspired, jam-band-influenced take on Americana music.
The Stone
The New School Glass Box Theater
55 W. 13th St., near Sixth Avenue
While the programming at this famed John Zorn-curated venue is always worth checking out, this summer’s offerings are exceptional, even by the high past standards of The Stone. For those who don’t know, the name is only coincidentally geological: It actually honors the husband-and-wife duo of Irving and Stephanie Stone, indomitable and beloved avant-garde jazz fans who were often a generation older than many of the performers. Irving died in 2004 at age 80; Stephanie in 2014, at age 93. When Zorn founded the not-for-profit music space (at Avenue C and East 2nd Street) in 2005, naming it The Stone was the obvious and perfect choice. In 2018, The Stone moved to its current location within the New School and, while the setting is somewhat fancier, its ethos is exactly the same. Zorn, as artistic director, chooses the guest curators for a week, and they in turn program a week of bills. Shining especially brightly in an already starry sky: Israeli jazz and klezmer saxophonist Daniel Zamir (July 2-5); jazz flutist and composer Nicole Mitchell (July 30-Aug. 2); and Brooklyn-raised Afrofuturist guitar player without borders Vernon Reid (Aug. 6-9). Though best known for his rock band, the still-performing Living Colour, between Reid’s tutelage with Ronald Shannon Jackson’s Decoding Society and his own restlessly inventive mind, anything is possible.
The Stone is open Wednesday through Sunday All shows are $20 cash, no advance tickets, no reservations, no drinks, no food, just music, which starts promptly at 8:30pm.
Battery Park River & Blues
Rockefeller Park
Battery Park City
July 10-31
That’s right, outdoor music fans, one of the summer’s best free music series unfolds across the lawn at Rockefeller Park, deep on the rarely discussed Lower West Side—aka Battery Park City. Because the name of this is River & Blues, some readers will recall the riposte of the great bluesman Sonny Boy Williamson to his producer, Leonard Chess, before recording a song called “Little Village”: “You name it your mammy if you want to!” By any name, with or without Mammy accompanying, Battery Park City is always worth visiting, including, if you bring kids along, its myriad playgrounds and the Brookfield Place food court.
The music schedule is as follows: July 10, Maggie Rose, Grammy-nominated Southern soul singer; July 17, Black queer Tennessean singer-songwriter Amythyst Kiah; July 24, the always scintillating Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra, led by the great Arturo O’Farrill; July 31, the powerful jazz-soul chanteuse Lady Blackbird. For all shows, doors open at 7pm, DJ sets begin 7:15pm, and the concerts kick off at 8pm.