Televised live on NBC-TV beginning at 8:00 pm
Broadcast live on WINS 1010
Wednesday, July 4, free, 9:25 pm (approx.)
212-494-4495
www.macys.com/social/fireworks
Macy’s July Fourth extravaganza celebrates its forty-second anniversary of lighting up the night sky on Wednesday, with seven barges between Twenty-Third and Fortieth Sts. on the East River. The festivities will be hosted by Akbar Gbajabiamila and Matt Iseman, with live performances by Ricky Martin, Blake Shelton, Keith Urban, the West Point Glee Club, the West Point Band, and Kelly Clarkson singing “God Bless America,” which turns one hundred this year. The score includes “Stars & Stripes Forever,” “The Star-Spangled Banner,” and a tribute to Leonard Bernstein’s centennial, with “New York, New York” from On the Town and “Mambo” and “America” from West Side Story. 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 seventy-five 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 neon pinwheels, swirling water fountains, brocade horse tails, ghosting fans, blooming ring chases, and pulsing hearts in more than two dozen hues.