this week in music

THE JOY OF RESISTANCE: RACHAEL SAGE, KRISTEN FORD, AND HANNAH JUDSON AT MERCURY LOUNGE

Who: Rachael Sage and the Sequins, Kristen Ford, Hannah Judson
What: Joy = Resistance Tour
Where: Mercury Lounge, 217 East Houston St.
When: Thursday, July 24, $15 in advance, $20 at door, 6:00
Why: The Joy = Resistance Tour pulls into Mercury Lounge on July 24, as Rachael Sage and Kristen Ford are joined by Hannah Judson for what should be a special night of music and inclusivity. MPress Records founder Sage will be performing with her longtime trio, the Sequins: Trina Hamlin on harmonica, Andy Mac on drums, and Kelly Halloran on violin; they will be celebrating the release of Sage’s latest single, “Live It Up,” while highlighting songs from her upcoming album, Canopy, along with old favorites. The L.A.-based Ford will be playing tunes from her debut full-length, Pinto, out August 22 from Righteous Babe; produced by Grammy winners Ani DiFranco and John Driskell Hopkins, it includes such tracks as “Wild Heart,” “Whiplash,” and “White Man’s Dream.” Judson, a Chicago-based French-American singer-songwriter, will be featuring tunes from her latest LP, Satellites Grace the Sky Like Tumbleweeds (Boneyard Records), which boasts such numbers as “Feather,” “Take the Angel Down,” and “Ocean Blue Eyes.”

On the gorgeously poetic “Just Enough” from Canopy, the New York City–based Sage sings, “I feel love in the morning when you wake me up / Love in the middle of the day don’t stop / I feel love in the evening, fills my cup just enough . . . shalalala. . . .” Discussing the tune, she says, “At first listen, [it] seems like a romantic love song and to some degree it started out that way when I was first writing it. But the longer I’ve played it live out on tour the more now it feels like it’s equally a mantra to oneself about being enough as you are: lovable enough, accomplished enough, attractive enough, smart enough . . . all the things that, for instance, a best friend or any loved one might acknowledge in you are truly, unconditionally, and authentically enough.”

There should be plenty of enough at Mercury on July 24 when Sage, Ford, and Judson take the stage on the Lower East Side.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

OEDIPUS REIMAGINED: THE GOSPEL AT COLONUS ON LITTLE ISLAND

Revival of The Gospel at Colonus on Little Island tells story of redemption and retribution (photo by Julieta Cervantes)

THE GOSPEL AT COLONUS
The Amph at Little Island
Pier 55, Hudson River Park at West Thirteenth St.
July 8-26, $10 standing room, $25 seats sold out, 8:30
littleisland.org

One of the grandest theatrical events of the summer is taking place on Little Island, Shayok Misha Chowdhury’s rousing, impassioned adaptation of Lee Breuer and Bob Telson’s The Gospel at Colonus, a spirited, spiritual retelling of the Oedipus and Antigone myths.

In 1983, Obie winner and Mabou Mines founding co-artistic director Breuer (Mabou Mines DollHouse, Peter and Wendy) teamed up with composer Telson (Chronicle of a Death Foretold, Bantú) to reimagine Robert Fitzgerald’s version of Sophocles’s Oedipus at Colonus as a Pentecostal revival meeting. The show debuted at BAM’s Next Wave Festival and was mounted on Broadway five years later, with Morgan Freeman as the Messenger; Oedipus was portrayed by Clarence Fountain and the Five Blind Boys of Alabama.

A tale of witness and testimony, of redemption and retribution, The Gospel at Colonus is a revelation at the Amph, where it begins each night amid the glow of sunset over the Hudson. David Zinn’s set is bathed in red; much of the action occurs in a broken circle in the center surrounding a four-step platform, in front of a yellow foot bridge running between high grass. Stacey Derosier’s lighting, switching from red to green to blue, illuminates Montana Levi Blanco’s loose-fitting purple and sackcloth gray costumes, a combination of Greek togas and Sunday finest. Garth MacAleavey’s sound design allows nature to mingle with the crisp, clear music and dialogue.

Stephanie Berry (On Sugarland, Déjà Vu) is sensational as the Preacher, serving as a kind of narrator and oracle. “Think no longer that you are in command here, / But rather think how, when you were, / You served your own destruction / Welcome, brothers and sisters, / I take as my text this evening the Book of Oedipus,” she announces at the start. “Oedipus! Damned in his birth, in his marriage damned, / Damned in the blood he shed with his own hand! / Oedipus! So pitifully ensnared in the net of his own destiny.”

Stephanie Berry, Davóne Tines, and Frank Senior portray different aspects of Oedipus (photo by Julieta Cervantes)

Oedipus — portrayed as a group by blind jazz vocalist Frank Senior, opera bass-baritone Davóne Tines, and Berry — has already blinded himself for having unknowingly killed his father and married his mother, Jocasta, who then hanged herself, and fathered four children with her, two sons, Eteocles and Polyneices, and two daughters, Antigone (Samantha Howard) and Ismene (Ayana George Jackson). Eteocles is a traitor and Polyneices (Jon-Michael Reese) a usurper, taking opposite sides in an upcoming battle, while Antigone and Ismene seek peace.

“Let every man in mankind’s frailty / Consider his last day; and let none / Presume on his good fortune until he find / Life, at his death, a memory without pain. / Amen,” Evangelist Antigone says.

On his journey, Oedipus encounters Jocasta’s brother, Deacon Creon (Dr. Kevin Bond), the former king, who has been tasked with returning Oedipus to Thebes; a friend (falsetto Serpentwithfeet), who welcomes him to Colonus; Pastor Theseus (Kim Burrell), who vows never to drive him away; and the Balladeer (Brandon Michael Nase), who initially refuses Oedipus and Antigone entry into his church and later questions Testifier Polyneices’s attempt to get back in his father’s good graces.

Kim Burrell rips the roof off the joint several times at Little Island (photo by Julieta Cervantes)

Pulitzer finalist Chowdhury (Public Obscenities, Rheology) beautifully flows Breuer’s poetic dialogue (his book earned him a Tony nomination) into Telson’s gospel, blues, and R&B score, featuring Breuer’s potent, emotional lyrics. (Breuer, who died in January 2021 at the age of eighty-three, and Telson, who at seventy-six is still making music, also collaborated on such other projects as Sister Suzie Cinema, The Warrior Ant, and Bagdad Cafe — The Musical.) “Who is this man? What is his name? Where does he come from?” a choragos (Brandon Michael Nase) demands, as if he could be addressing any of us. “Child, I’m so glad you’re here / There’s hope for me / There’s a prophecy . . . I’ve been waiting for a sign / to ease my troubled mind,” Oedipus (Senior and Tines) sings in “Through My Tears.” Oedipus (Tines) later tells Polyneices, “Once you held the power / And when you did you drove me out / Made me a homeless man / You are no son of mine.” But soon Serpentwithfeet is praying, “Let not our friend go down / In grief and weariness / Let some just God spare him / Any more distress” in “Eternal Sleep.”

Burrell tears the roof off the joint — or she would have if the Amph had a roof — in a pair of rip-roaring numbers, “Jubilee (Never Drive You Away)” and “Lift Him Up,” that gets the crowd moving and grooving, hooting and hollering. Among the other notable songs are “Live Where You Can,” “You’d Take Him Away,” and “Evil,” although the finale, “Let the Weeping Cease,” feels unnecessary. Music directors Dionne McClain-Freeney and James Hall lead a terrific band, consisting of McClain-Freeney on piano, Butch Heyward on organ, Bobby Bryan on guitar, Booker King on bass, Jackie Coleman on trumpet, Taja Graves-Parker on trombone, Jason Marshall and Isaiah Johnson on baritone sax, Kevin Walters on alto sax, and Clayton Craddock on drums; the horns perform on high scaffolds at the corners of the stage nearest the river; the superb James Hall Worship & Praise choir includes Pastor Charles, Schanel Crawford, Jaqwanna Crawford, Jacquetta Fayton, Angie Goshea, Robyn McLeod, TJ Reddick, Teddy Reid, Vischon Robinson, Lenny Vancooten, Eugene Marcus Walker, and Darlene Nikki Washington.

In the closing hymn, Serpentwithfeet declares, “There is no end.” That statement is certainly true of the Greek myth of Oedipus; there is no end to the myriad ways this twisted, heart-wrenching can be told, and The Gospel at Colonus on Little Island is among the most inventive, nourishing the soul for ninety glorious minutes.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

HITS AND MISSES: MIKE FORNATALE’S 1970 BIRTHDAY SHOW AT THE CUTTING ROOM

MURDERERS’ ROW PRESENTS MIKE FORNATALE’S 1970 SHOW
The Cutting Room
44 East 32nd St. between Madison & Fifth Aves.
Thursday, July 10, $27.83, 7:00
212-691-1900
thecuttingroomnyc.com

When he turned sixty-four in 2018, singer, guitarist, and producer Mike Fornatale put together a special show consisting of songs from 1964 — not just famous tracks but deep cuts and B-sides he dug. “I decided a few years ago that, starting with 1964 — the year I started loving music again after walking away from it, while still in kindergarten, during the Fabian/Avalon/Rydell era (something I still haven’t forgiven Philadelphia for) — I was going to assemble a group of stalwart musicians and singers every year and do a show consisting of great songs from the corresponding year,” he said in 2024. “We had a blast with 1964, ’65, ’66, ’67, and ’68. I’m going to do this every year for as long as I can still stand up. Hey! I can still stand up!”

On July 10, Fornatale, who has performed with the Left Banke, the Monks, Moby Grape, the Washington Squares, and Losers’ Lounge, will be at the Cutting Room to celebrate his seventy-first birthday by playing songs from 1970 — they are one year off because of Covid. Among the stalwart musicians and singers joining him, a revolving group he calls Murderers’ Row, are Lauren Agnelli, Russ Alderson, Emilie Bienne, Rembert Block, Tom Clark, Tommy DeVito, Lizzie Edwards, Pam Fleming, Dave Foster, Jeff Hudgins, J. J. Jordan, Stephanie Marie, David Milone, Charly Roth, Tom Shad, Carlton J. Smith, Erica Smith, Peter Stuart Kohman, Tommy Von Voigt, Jahn Xavier, Tony “Z” Zajkowsky, and Jim Allen. Fornatale compiles the setlist and decides who will play what; don’t necessarily expect to hear the biggest songs of the year, like “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” “(They Long to Be) Close to You,” and “American Woman,” but then again, who knows?

Murderers’ Row veteran Jim Allen of the Lazy Lions and the Ramblin’ Kind told twi-ny, “It’s always a blast and an honor to be among such a powerful assemblage of players and singers, reveling in the great anthems and obscurities of the past.”

Fornatale is packing so much in that he will be hosting the second half later this fall. But as he promises, “Hits! Misses! Things you’ve never heard before! And just some other stuff that I really like! How many songs? TONS OF ’EM!! Don’t worry! You’ll be sitting down!”

He also doesn’t refer to these shows as a series; he prefers crusade.

“We’re going to do it every year. I hope I can make it at least as far as, oh, I don’t know, eighty-six? Eighty-seven?” he recently posted on Instagram. “I want to make DeVito play the tympani on ‘Life in a Northern Town.’”

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

WHAT IS THIS? MOZART’S DON GIOVANNI — A ROCK OPERA AT THE CUTTING ROOM

Mozart’s Don Giovanni — A Rock Opera offers a new take on a classic (photo by Ken Howard)

MOZART’S DON GIOVANNI — A ROCK OPERA
The Cutting Room
44 East 32nd St. between Madison & Fifth Aves.
Through July 7, $39-$125, $25 food & beverage minimum per person, 7:00
212-691-1900
thecuttingroomnyc.com
www.dgrocks.com

Rachel Zatcoff is superb as Donna Elvira in Adam B. Levowitz’s rock opera adaptation of Mozart’s Don Giovanni at the Cutting Room; if only the rest of the production lived up to her excellence. Mozart’s 1787 tale, with a libretto by Lorenzo DaPonte, is returning to the Met this fall, a two-hundred-minute extravaganza directed by Ivo van Hove and conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin and Daniele Rustioni; producer, director, and orchestrator Levowitz’s English-language version has been streamlined to about two hours, primarily by eliminating the subplot involving Zerlina and Mesetto.

The crux of the central story is still intact. After bedding Donna Anna (Anchal Dhir), the dashing Don Giovanni (Ryan Silverman) is challenged to a duel by her father, the Commander (Edwin Jhamaal Davis). Giovanni implores the older man to walk away, but his pride gets the best of him, and Giovanni kills him. Anna then insists that her fiancé, the weak-kneed Don Ottavio (Felipe Bombonato), defend her honor and kill Giovanni, which is not really in his wheelhouse.

Meanwhile, a former lover of Giovanni’s, Elvira, has been searching for “the bastard who left me,” prepared to “take a bow knife and slice his heart from his chest . . . for the maidens he deflowered.” Giovanni and his right-hand man, the clownish Leporello (Richard Coleman), keeper of The Almanac of Fornication, come upon a woman they do not recognize at first, and Giovanni turns to woo her until he sees that it is indeed Elvira, who tells him she wants to castrate him. He runs away.

Levowitz’s plot grows more and more silly as Anna and Ottavio seek revenge, Giovanni keeps trying to increase the number of women he has seduced, Elvira has to decide whether she actually loves or hates Giovanni, and Leporello serves Giovanni through thick and thin, providing comic relief that is mostly thin.

Leporello (Richard Coleman) and Donna Elvira (Rachel Zatcoff) know something is afoot in rock opera (photo by Ken Howard)

Mozart’s Don Giovanni — A Rock Opera is misguided from the start. The conceit is that we are gathered at the Cutting Room at the invitation of Baroness Margarete Voigt on December 5, 1891, the centennial of Mozart’s death at the age of thirty-five. We are told in a letter that we are in for “an evening of elegance, fine food and drink (for a modest indulgence), sensuality, and sublime music,” which sets the bar far too high for what ensues.

For two hours, Leporello makes anachronistic, self-referential jokes that fall flat, like “I won’t block your Dopamine / No, no, no, no, no, no / Cue Giovanni and scene” and “Not my circus, not my monkeys / I’m just here for vegan snacks.” The eight-piece band, consisting of two guitars, two trumpets, three trombones, bass, drums, and piano, often feels out of sync; songs work best when it’s just pianist and conductor Nevada Lozano accompanying the singer. There were significant problems with the surtitles projected onto the back screen, as they got stuck or just vanished; in addition, there were numerous typos (rogue/rouge, savoir/savior), and what was being sung was not always exactly what was on the screen. While the sentences still meant the same thing, the slight differences were distracting. Projections that were supposed to identify locations got lost on the carved facade above the stage. The acting was a mixed bag, ranging from excellent to, well, not so excellent. There were also issues with the microphones, which were so close to the performers’ mouths that the sound squealed through the speakers; only the classically trained soprano Zatcoff (The Phantom of the Opera, Candide) kept her mic at a distance, letting her lovely voice sound more naturally through the space. Debbi Hobson’s costumes make it look like the characters are not always in the same time period.

I’m all for reimagining the classics in any way possible, but this Don Giovanni had me aching for something more traditional.

Early on, Anna asks, “My God, What Is This?” After seeing the show, I have the same question.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

TURN IT UP: ROLLING STONE PRESENTS “AMPLIFIED” AT ARTECHOUSE

Rock stars are celebrated onstage and behind the scenes in “Amplified” at ARTECHOUSE (photo by ATH Studio)

ROLLING STONE PRESENTS AMPLIFIED
ARTECHOUSE NYC
Chelsea Market
439 West Fifteenth St.
Daily through August 31, $32-$42 (BOGO June 30 – July 7 with code NYCJULY4)
www.artechouse.com

For many years, Rolling Stone magazine was my go-to for music, movies, and politics; I had a subscription for decades, and I pored over every page, every article, every review, every interview, every photo. Somewhere along the line it fell off my radar. So I was excited when I heard about “Rolling Stone Presents: Amplified,” an immersive experience at ARTECHOUSE in Chelsea Market. But I left feeling “meh.”

Audiovisual immersive experiences have been hot in New York City since the pandemic, from dueling van Gogh experiences in 2021 to Limitless AI at AD/BK in 2022, Monet’s Garden in 2023, Dark Matter at Mercer Labs in 2024, and TECHNE: The Vivid Unknown at BAM earlier this year. Featuring no performers, the Insta-friendly productions range from cool to silly to just plain why?

The latest is “Amplified,” which attempts to get to the heart of rock and roll in sixty minutes of photos, videos, colorful designs, and text narrated by Kevin Bacon, leading us through categories dedicated to specific instruments, famous singers, studio work, cars, fashion, concerts, and fandom, among others. More than a thousand photos and two hundred video clips are projected onto three walls and the floor, covering 270º in 18K resolution, bringing us the Who, the Beatles, Miley Cyrus, the Rolling Stones, Patti Smith, Bob Dylan, Beyoncé, the Ramones, Janis Joplin, Bruce Springsteen, Aretha Franklin, David Bowie, Joni Mitchell, Sam Cooke, Karol G, Rico Nasty, Kendrick Lamar, Kiss, Cyndi Lauper, Dr. Dre, Radiohead, Lauryn Hill, AC/DC, Amy Winehouse, Metallica, Siouxsie Sioux, Rage Against the Machine, Ice Spice, Van Halen, Chappell Roan, Jimi Hendrix, et al.

The photographs are by such legends as Mark Seliger, Janette Beckman, Danny Clinch, Lynn Goldsmith, Anton Corbijn, Bob Gruen, Pooneh Ghana, Jim Marshall, and Neal Preston, although they don’t all come from the pages of Rolling Stone. It often feels like a random collection of sights and sounds within each category, flashing by quickly save for longer focuses on a few artists. The same with the projections that bleed off the screens and onto the floor, some exciting, others ho-hum. Make sure to get up and walk around — staring down at the floor will make you gleefully dizzy — and take a cushion and sit in the middle of the projections to get a fuller effect. It probably helps if there’s a big crowd when you go; when I was there, only four other people were in the room, and they remained seated on a couch in the back the entire time.

“Amplified” finally hits its stride in the grand finale, as more than thirteen hundred Rolling Stone covers are unveiled across the space in the span of several minutes, a thrilling barrage that reminded me why the magazine, which was cofounded by Jann Wenner in 1967, has been so essential for so many decades and how iconic and memorable so many of those covers are.

There’s a bar upstairs where you can order beer, soft drinks, and cocktails (Rebel Spirit, Bohemian Fever, Whole Lotta Magic), take a shot of house-made blackberry vodka, and check out a few additional small installations — don’t miss the narrow, vertical screen of hundreds of miniature videos — and you’ll find a wax figure of Jimi Hendrix in the gift shop, on loan from Madame Tussauds. In addition, tickets are two-for-one June 30 to July 7 with the code NYCJULY4.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

MAGIC TRAIN: PASSENGERS PULLS INTO PAC NYC

The 7 Fingers pull into PAC NYC to take audiences on an unforgettable journey (photo by Matthew Murphy)

PASSENGERS
Perelman Performing Arts Center (PAC NYC)
251 Fulton St.
Tuesday – Saturday through June 29, $43-$117
pacnyc.org
7fingers.com

“There’s something about a train that’s magic,” Richie Havens sang in a series of 1980s Amtrak commercials. The 7 Fingers troupe captures that magic and more in the breathtaking Passengers, continuing at PAC NYC through June 29.

For ninety minutes, the Montreal-based company combines circus acrobatics, gymnastics, song, dance, physical theater, and prose to take audiences on an exhilarating and affecting ride on the rails, By the end, the performers feel like characters in a play more than mere strangers on a train.

Written, directed, and spectacularly choreographed by Tony nominee Shana Carroll, Passengers begins with Kaisha Dessalines-Wright, Marie-Christine Fournier, Eduardo De Azevedo Grillo, Marco Ingaramo, Anna Kichtchenko, Maude Parent, Michael Patterson, Pablo Pramparo, Méliejade Tremblay-Bouchard, Santiago Rivera Laugerud, Sereno Aguilar Izzo, and Will Underwood bringing out chairs and aligning them as if on a train, destination unknown. Over the course of approximately twenty scenes, each one highlighted by a different discipline, they make their way through tunnels and over bridges as they run, jump, tumble, leap, twirl, and throw one another high in the air, incorporating such props as suitcases, luggage racks, clothing, and the chairs.

Kichtchenko spins multiple hula hoops, holding them out for several of the men to dive through. Contortionist Parent claps her hands to stop and restart time, altering reality in between. Fournier and Grillo perform a romantic hand-to-trap pas de deux in midair on duo trapeze to a rousing version of “Saint Louis Blues.” Dessalines-Wright sings “Train Is Coming” with Grillo on ukulele, advising, “Train is coming, and not that slow / You catch it up or you let it go / Round and round the tracks they go / When you’re back you let me know.” Dessalines-Wright discusses Einstein’s theory of relativity as it applies to speeding trains and time. Grillo pulls himself up on aerial straps, then is joined by Dessalines-Wright on duo straps. Izzo juggles a growing number of white styrofoam balls, some from inside his shirt. Kichtchenko flies with aerial silks. Ingaramo impossibly rises, balances, and slides down a Chinese pole. Three performers build vertical human chains to the song “Call,” which promises, “We will no longer / We will no longer / break apart / We will no further / We will no further / Fall.” Friends and lovers come together and say goodbye.

Suitcases, luggage racks, playing cards, and other props are used alongside hula hoops, aerial straps and silks, duo trapeze, and a Chinese pole in dazzling 7 Fingers show (Renee Choi Photography)

Passengers evokes Cirque du Soleil, Pina Bausch, The Music Man’s opening number, Company XIV, and STREB but is clearly its own phenomenon. Ana Cappelluto’s ever-changing set is supplemented with Johnny Ranger’s videos of passing landscapes and tunnels, some projected on a horizontal bar at the top back of the stage, along with Éric Champoux’s lighting, which creates dazzling shadows and glowing effects. Colin Gagné composed the wide-ranging original music and designed the sound with Jérôme Guilleaume.

The performers, in naturalistic costumes by Camille Thibault-Bédard, are nothing short of spectacular, celebrating remarkable feats that push the limits of what the human body can do. But Carroll (Water for Elephants) manages to make it all relatable, as train travel is still mostly an egalitarian way to get from one place to another.

In “La hora de la hora,” the song accompanying the juggling, lyricist Boogát admits, “Soy un loco más en la locomotora (I’m just another crazy person on the locomotive).”

You’d be crazy not to get on board this magic train.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

DON’T STOP THAT PIGEON: CELEBRATING JUNE 14 ON THE HIGH LINE

PIGEON FEST
The High Line
Thirtieth St. & the Spur
Saturday, June 14, free, noon – 8:00
www.thehighline.org

What did you do on Saturday, June 14, 2025? It’s looking to be quite a memorable date.

June 14 is Flag Day, when America pays tribute to the Stars and Stripes. Although it’s not a federal holiday, it is, according to Proclamation 1335, signed in 1916 by President Woodrow Wilson, a day “with special patriotic exercises, at which means shall be taken to give significant expression to our thoughtful love of America, our comprehension of the great mission of liberty and justice to which we have devoted ourselves as a people, our pride in the history and our enthusiasm for the political programme of the nation, our determination to make it greater and purer with each generation, and our resolution to demonstrate to all the world its vital union in sentiment and purpose, accepting only those as true compatriots who feel as we do the compulsion of this supreme allegiance.” The flag was approved by the Continental Congress on June 14, 1777.

June 14 is also unofficially known as Cup Day; on June 14, 1994, the New York Rangers ended their fifty-four-year drought and won the Stanley Cup following a tough seven-game series with the Vancouver Canucks. The Broadway Blueshirts won the finale on goals by Brian Leetch, Adam Graves, and captain Mark Messier; Mike Richter stood tall between the pipes.

On June 14, 1969, German tennis champion Steffi Graf was born.

On June 14, 1963, the Soviets launched the manned spacecraft Vostok 5.

On June 14, 1940, the first train carrying Polish prisoners pulled into Auschwitz.

On June 14, 1928, Che Guevara was born.

On June 14, 1811, Uncle Tom’s Cabin author Harriet Beecher Stowe was born.

Oh, also, on June 14, 1946, Donald John Trump was born in Queens.

President Trump has decided to honor his birthday, Flag Day, and the 250th anniversary of the US Army on June 14, 2025, by holding a military parade along the National Mall in Washington, DC, consisting of 6,600 soldiers with historical weapons, 50 military aircraft, 150 vehicles, tanks, helicopters, several dozen horses, and 2 mules; the total cost is expected to be $145 million. There will be protests around the country, from the Women’s March’s “Kick Out the Clowns” to “No Kings” in nearly two thousand congressional districts.

If you’re looking for something different, your best bet might just be Pigeon Fest, a party celebrating Iván Argote’s seventeen-foot-high Dinosaur, a giant pigeon sculpture at the High Line Spur at Thirtieth St. There will be artist talks, workshops, carnival games, music, a puppet show, a pageant, a bazaar, a science fair, and more, with Maria Assis Silva, Julia Rooney, Stephanie Costello, Tina Pina (Mother Pigeon), Machine Dazzle, Jameson Fitzpatrick, Lee Ranaldo, the Bird Is the Word Ensemble, and others.

Below is the complete schedule.

Iván Argote’s Dinosaur is centerpiece of High Line celebration (photo by Timothy Schenck)

The Discovery Fair, with Pop-up Pigeons!, Watercolor Workshop with Food Scraps Ink, the Birdsong Project, the Center for Book Arts, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, the LES Ecology Center, Lofty Pigeon Books, the Mayor’s Office of Urban Agriculture (MOUA), Monument Lab, Mother Pigeon, NYC Bird Alliance, Pat McCarthy, and the Wild Bird Fund, Eastern Rail Yards, noon – 5:00

Bird Bazaar, with the Coop Carnival, Pigeon Piñata Party, Alternative Monuments for NYC, Pigeon Fan Club, NYPL Bookmobile Station and Storytime, and Best Plants for Birds on the High Line, Coach Passage at Thirtieth St., noon – 5:00

Zumba: Pigeon Dance Party, led by Maria Assis Silva, noon

Mother Pigeon’s Impeckable Puppet Show, 1:00

Pigeon Impersonation Pageant, 2:00

Panel Discussion: Building Bird-Friendly Cities, with Qiana Mickie, Christian Cooper, and Ethan Dropkin, moderated by Richard Hayden, 3:30

Artist Talk: Iván Argote and Cecilia Alemani, 4:15

Musical Concert, with Jameson Fitzpatrick, a string quartet performance by students from the Manhattan School of Music and Juilliard Pre-College Programs, the Bird Is the Word Ensemble organized by Lee Ranaldo, and a special guest headliner, 5:30 – 8:00

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]