Televised live on NBC-TV beginning at 8:00 pm
Broadcast live on WINS 1010
Tuesday, July 4, free, 9:20 pm (approx.)
212-494-4495
www.macys.com
Macy’s July Fourth extravaganza celebrates its forty-first anniversary of lighting up the night sky on Tuesday, with five barges between Twenty-Fourth and Forty-First Sts. on the East River. The festivities will be hosted by Akbar Gbajabiamila, Matt Iseman, and Kristine Leahy, with live performances by Brad Paisley, Hailee Steinfeld, and Lady Antebellum. In addition, the fireworks score, under the guidance of creative director Wesley Whatley, includes the West Point Glee Club, the West Point Band, the USO Show Troupe, mezzo-soprano Jamie Barton singing “The Star-Spangled Banner,” Craig Campbell performing “American Anthem,” and Heather Headley delivering Elivs Presley’s “If I Can Dream,” with words inspired by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Among the best viewing points are along the elevated portions of the FDR Drive, with access at Houston, Eighteenth, Twenty-Third, Thirty-Fourth, and Forty-Second Sts. You should avoid Battery Park, Battery Park City, Roosevelt Island, Hunter’s Point South Waterfront Park, and Brooklyn Bridge Park. The fireworks display, featuring more than sixty thousand shells launching from twelve computer firing systems and reaching more than a thousand feet high, is designed by Pyro Spectaculars by Souza; keep a lookout for the new pyro pixelation mural, purple crackling ghost peonies, color-changing chrysanthemums, orange bees, and pulsing happy faces in nearly two dozen hues.