Taj Mahal will bring the blues to World Financial Center Plaza as part of three-day free festival
World Financial Center Plaza
220 Vesey St.
Thursday, July 28, and Friday, July 29, 6:00 – 9:30, and Saturday, July 30, 1:00 – 6:30
Admission: free
212-417-7050
www.artsworldfinancialcenter.com
As temperatures soar skyward, cool, free music is always a mainstay of summertime in New York City. Some legendary acts are on tap at the inaugural Lowdown Hudson Blues Festival, a three-day cavalcade of blues-infused live performance taking place downtown at World Financial Center Plaza, under the stars (and sun) along the river. The festival kicks off at 6:00 on Thursday with an evening featuring former Stevie Ray Vaughan sideman Mike Farris and his Roseland Rhythm Revue, Memphis singer/songwriter/upright bassist Amy LaVere, and culminating with a rare, free New York appearance by the ageless Taj Mahal, a performer for whom the term “legend” might seem almost desultory. Over his forty-plus year career, the Harlem-born Mahal has explored and expanded the boundaries of both acoustic and electric folk, blues, and world music. He’ll be performing here with his trio, consisting of Kester Smith on drums and Bill Rich on bass. Friday night presents another bill that promises to deliver on the “Lowdown” theme, highlighted by a collaboration between legendary genre-shredding guitarist James Blood Ulmer and string-shredding Black Rock Coalition founder Vernon Reid. Ulmer’s experiments in harmolodics and avant-garde jazz and Reid’s background in such bands as Living Colour should combine for an inquisitive spin on the blues they both revere. Ulmer is touring with the reunited Memphis Blood Blues, with whom he recorded The Sun Sessions album ten years ago. Toronto outfit the Beauties and California band the Growlers will open the show. The festival concludes Saturday with an afternoon slate comprising a bevy of blues-and-other acts. The day’s performers include New Orleans piano-legend-in-the-making Henry Butler, Steve Bernstein’s Millennial Territory Orchestra, local bluegrass-oriented Citigrass, Georgia soul singer Ryan Shaw, Blues Project cofounder Danny Kalb, and polymath minstrels Hazmat Modine. Overall, an amazingly diverse array of blues-oriented acts will be appearing over the three-day extravaganza, which should be one of the season’s musical highlights.