This week’s Time Out New York has a solid rundown of all the concert happenings coming up over the next few months. It is literally a Feast of Music here during the summertime, with many events free. Here’s a quick rundown of the tried and true:
- Celebrate Brooklyn: My personal favorite, mostly because it’s two blocks from my house. 😉 The quality of this fest seems to get better and better every year (even Prince showed up last year, in an unannounced encore during Maceo Parker’s opening night gig.) Highlights this year include The Neville Brothers (June 14), the Brooklyn Philharmonic with Mark O’Connor and Maya Beiser (July 14) and Philip Miller’s "REwind: A Cantata for Voice, Tape and Testimony", based on transcripts from South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation hearings (July 6).
- Central Park Summerstage: NYC’s original free outdoor summer fest, located at Rumsey Playfield in the park. The big shows this year: Cassandra Wilson (June 15), Brazilian Girls (July 22), and the incredible Zap Mama (Aug. 12), who totally blew me away at the Austin City Limits Festival in 2005.
- River to River Festival: This one is all over the map – both geographically and musically – but has some real jewels, if you know where to dig. The big event this year is the 26-hour Bang on a Can Marathon (June 2-3), which moves from it’s longtime home at BAM to the Winter Garden in the World Financial Center. Other highlights include: the New Pornographers (July 4 – Battery Park), The Flatlanders (Aug. 2 – Castle Clinton), and the Amstel Saxophone Quartet (Aug. 6 – Pace University).
- Met Opera in the Parks: After being moved last year to the end of the summer, the Met’s back on schedule this year, with performances of Boheme and Faust around the five boroughs and Jersey. Some pretty major talent’s involved, including Hei-Kyung Hong, Roberto Aronica, Dwayne Croft, Paul Plishka, and James Morris(!) as Méphistophélès.
- New York Philharmonic in the Parks: The usual picnic fare: Berlioz, Mendelssohn, Tchaikovsky. The final concert in Central Park (July 17) features Andrew Davis conducting Strauss’ Till Eulenspiegel and various arias sung by Canadian soprano Measha Brueggergosman
If all that isn’t enough, there’s also the JVC Jazz Festival, the Lincoln Center Festival, Mostly Mozart, and more summer concert tours than you can shake your Visa at. And that’s not even getting into the out-of-town festivals – we’ll save that some another time.