Tag Archives: marcus garvey park

CHARLIE PARKER JAZZ FESTIVAL 2019

charlie parker

Multiple locations
August 21-25, free (some events require advance RSVP)
cityparksfoundation.org/charlieparker

City Parks Foundation’s twenty-seventh annual Charlie Parker Jazz Festival, a free five-day SummerStage salute to the Kansas City–born saxophonist known as Bird and Yardbird, celebrates the centennial of the Harlem Renaissance this year with two big concerts and satellite events. The highlights are the shows on August 24 in Marcus Garvey Park and August 25 at Tompkins Square Park, but there are also panel discussions, film screenings, tributes to Clark Terry, Fred Hersch, and Art Blakey, and solo performances in intimate garden settings, some of which require advance RSVP. The festivities take place in Harlem, where Parker established himself as one of the greatest jazz saxophonists, and on the Lower East Side, where Parker lived from 1950-54, in a now-landmarked row house on Ave. B.

Wednesday, August 21
Native Soul Tribute to Clark Terry & Screening: Keep on Keepin’ On (Alan Hicks, 2014), Hansborough Recreation Center Rooftop, advance RSVP required (charlierparker@cityparksfoundation.org), concert at 6:00, screening at 7:45

Jazz in the Garden: Michael Marcus, 6BC Botanical Garden, 5:30

Thursday, August 22
Unpacking Jazz and Gender Justice, with Terri Lynne Carrington and Aja Burrell Wood, the National Jazz Museum in Harlem, advance RSVP required (charlierparker@cityparksfoundation.org), 12:00

An Evening at Langston’s: Celebrating the Centennial Anniversary of the Harlem Renaissance, with Candice Hoyes, the Langston Hughes House, advance RSVP required (events@itooarts.com), 7:00

Screening: The Ballad of Fred Hersch (Charlotte Lagarde & Carrie Lozano, 2016), followed by a Q&A with the directors, Maysles Documentary Center, advance RSVP required (charlierparker@cityparksfoundation.org), 7:00

Friday, August 23
Jazz in the Garden: René Mclean, Harlem Rose Garden, 5:30

Harlem 100: Mwenso and the Shakes, Brianna Thomas, Vuyo Sotashe, Fred Wesley, and Jazzmobile Presents: Winard Harper & Jeli Posse, Marcus Garvey Park, 7:00

Saturday, August 24
Dee Dee Bridgewater, Ravi Coltrane, Quiana Lynell, and Reclamation: Camille Thurman, Nikara Warren and Brandee Younger, Marcus Garvey Park, 3:00

Sunday, August 25
Carl Allen’s Art Blakey Tribute, George Coleman Trio, Fred Hersch, and Lakecia Benjamin, Tompkins Square Park, 3:00

THE BACCHAE

UPTOWN SHAKESPEARE IN THE PARK
Marcus Garvey Park, Richard Rodgers Amphitheater
Tuesday – Sunday through July 28, free, 8:30
www.cthnyc.org

Jesus Christ Superstar meets The Rocky Horror Picture Show in the Classical Theatre of Harlem’s funky “Uptown Shakespeare in the Park!” world premiere of Bryan Doerries’s new adaptation of Euripides’s The Bacchae. The free show, continuing at the Richard Rodgers Amphitheater in Marcus Garvey Park through July 28, has the ebullient energy of NBC’s live television versions of musicals (The Sound of Music, Peter Pan, the aforementioned Jesus Christ Superstar) rather than that of a fully formed stage production as it reinterprets the classical Greek tragedy for the twenty-first century while kicking off the company’s twentieth anniversary. “Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, get ready to make some noise for the man you been waiting for. The man that can make all your dreams come true. The preachya that can reach ya, in all the right places. Give it up for Preachya D!!!” a voiceover announces, and Preachya D, better known as Dionysus (Jason C. Brown), enters to much fanfare and proclaims, “I came here as a preacha, as a teacha / I can only hope I can reach you before you run out of time / So betta listen to this rhyme / And then get in line / I hope you ready to learn.”

Dionysus is surrounded by his worshipful followers, a three-woman chorus (Gabrielle Djenné, Rebecca Ana Peña, and Lori Vega), eight dancers (Daniela Funicello, Ashley LaRosa, Brynlie Helmich, Sai Rodboon, Hannah Gross, Madelyn LaLonde, Harmony Jackson, and Kat Files), and a guitar-shredding musician (Alicyn Yaffee). King Pentheus (RJ Foster) doesn’t believe Dionysus is the son of Zeus and is jealous of his minions, known as Bacchettes, while his grandfather, former king Cadmus (Charles Bernard Murray), is ready to go dancing with the Bacchettes, hidden in the mountains, alongside wise old Tiresias (Brian D. Coats). Caught somewhere in the middle is Agaue (Andrea Patterson), Pentheus’s mother and Cadmus’s daughter. After a messenger (Brian Demar Jones) advises Pentheus of the wild rituals going on atop the hill, the king asks Dionysus to bring him there, but Pentheus, of course, is about to get more than he bargained for.

Choppily directed by Classical Theatre of Harlem associate artistic director Carl Cofield (One Night in Miami, The Dutchman) The Bacchae takes place on rafters and scaffolding designed by Christopher and Justin Swader, with shadowy, abstract projections by Katherine Freer on more than a dozen vertical screens. Outfitted in Lex Liang’s sexy costumes, the cast communicates the basic narrative through Doerries’s (Antigone in Ferguson, Theater of War) retelling, which includes a lot of description of offstage activities and festivities to move the plot along. The eight woman dancers, members of Elisa Monte Dance, climb all over the stage and into the space on the ground in front of the audience, their ecstatic movements choreographed by Tiffany Rea-Fisher to original music by Fred Kennedy, while Yaffee nearly steals the show as she tears it up with her loud and aggressive guitar playing. The play deals with issues of sexuality, gender, power, and vengeance, but it gets too caught up in itself; the audience is encouraged to take nonflash photos, which is always distracting, and when Preachya D beckons people to stand and dance in their seats, nary a soul got up the night I went, although a handful of people did walk out later. The Bacchae has some cool individual elements, but the shepherds have lost control of their flock as a whole.

CHARLIE PARKER JAZZ FESTIVAL 2018

charlie parker jazz festival

Multiple locations
August 22-28, free (some events require advance RSVP)
cityparksfoundation.org/charlieparker

City Parks Foundation’s twenty-sixth annual Charlie Parker Jazz Festival, a five-day SummerStage salute to the Kansas City–born saxophonist known as Bird and Yardbird, kicks off August 22 at 2:00 with a Family Jazz Party with Adam O’Farrill and Immanuel Wilkins at the National Jazz Museum in Harlem, followed at 7:00 by “Paper Man @ 50,” a conversation with trumpeter Charles Tolliver and saxophonist Gary Bartz on the occasion of the golden anniversary of the recording of Tolliver’s debut album. On August 23 at 5:30, the School of Jazz and Contemporary Music at the New School will host a “Paul Motian Tribute” featuring excerpts from Michael Patrick Kelly’s upcoming documentary Motian in Motion, a Q&A moderated by guitarist Steve Cardenas, and a live set by Cardenas, Frank Kimbrough, and Ben Allison. Also at 5:30, the Jazz Foundation of America and Ariana’s List present “Jazz in the Garden: George Braith,” with the saxophonist playing in the 6BC Botanical Garden. And at 7:30, the Maysles Documentary Center will present a free screening of Jake Meginsky’s Milford Graves Full Mantis, with Meginsky and Graves, who turns seventy-seven today, participating in a Q&A after the film. On August 24 at 5:30, for “Jazz in the Garden: Antoine Rooney,” the tenor and soprano saxophonist will perform in the Harlem Rose Garden.

The festival hits the next level on Friday night, when Tolliver will celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of Paper Man in Marcus Garvey Park with special guests Bartz, Jack DeJohnette, Buster Williams, and a surprise; vocalist Brianna Thomas gets things going with a Jazzmobile show at 7:00. On Saturday at 3:00, pianist Monty Alexander and the Harlem Kingston Express, vocalist Catherine Russell, pianist Matthew Whitaker and his trio, and trumpeter Keyon Harrold will take the stage in Marcus Garvey Park. And the partying reaches its crescendo on Sunday afternoon at 3:00 in Tompkins Square Park with the Gary Bartz Quartet, the Bad Plus, pianist Amina Claudine Myers, and the newly commissioned work “UNHEARD,” a Bird tribute with Wilkins, Joel Ross, and O’Farrill.

MAKE MUSIC NEW YORK SUMMER 2018

make music new york

Make Music New York is back for its thirteenth summer season, celebrating the longest day of the year with more than a thousand free concerts across the city on June 21. There are Mass Appeal participatory events, live music in parks and plazas, unique gatherings in unusual places, and just about anything else you can think of. Below are only a handful of the highlights, arranged chronologically.

Sunrise/Sunset, communal performance by composer Brian Petuch, 155 Cedar St., World Trade Center, 5:25 am – 8:31 pm

Mass Appeal Vocals: Midsummer Mozart’s Requiem, 180 Greenwich St., 9/11 Memorial Plaza, 12 noon

Mamma Mia Sing Along Truck, Times Square at 12:30, Theodore Roosevelt Park at 2:00, Old Fulton Street Plaza at 4:00, and Storm Ritter Studio at 6:00

Joe’s Pub Block Party, with Treya Lam, Migguel Anggelo, Yemen Blues Duo featuring Ravid Kahalani & Omer Avital, Mohsen Namjoo, and M.A.K.U. Soundsystem, Astor Place Plaza, 1:00 – 7:00

On the Waterfront at Pier I, classical minimalist piano pieces performed by Ethan Liang and Ella Kronman, Emily Tong and Maxim Dybal Denysenko, Joan Forsyth and Griffin Strout, Olivia D’Amato and Griffin Strout, Katherine Miller, Mary Coit, Julia Meltzer, Mia and Michelle Akulfi, Curtis Decker, Ella Kronman and Jacqueline Ramirez, Ariela Bohrod, Yusei Hata, and Jenny Undercofler, Riverside Park off West Seventieth St., 4:30

Mass Appeal Bucket Drumming, with Jessie Nelson and Shelby Blezinger-McCay, Pearl St. Triangle, 5:00

The Well-Tempered Clavier, 9/11 Memorial Plaza, 5:00 – 8:00

LIC Block Party, with Avi B Three, the Blue Dahlia, and Underground Horns, Dutch Kills St., 5:00 – 9:00

Mass Appeal Harmonicas, with Jia-Yi He, Central Park Pond Lawn, 5:30

Mass Appeal Ukuleles, with Makalina Abalos Gallagher, Central Park Ladies Pavilion, 5:30

Harlem to Broadway!, Richard Amphitheater, Marcus Garvey Park, 6:00

Mass Appeal French Horns, with Linda Blacken and the French Horn Nation, “Uptown Grand Central” community plaza, East 125th St. & Park Ave., 6:30

The Mp3 Experiment Number Fifteen, Brooklyn Bridge Park’s Harbor View Lawn, Pier 1, 7:00

Mass Appeal Guitars, with Evie Dolan, Brandon Niederauer, and Maxwell Violet, Union Square Park, 7:00

Twilight Chorus (for Humans), composed by Pete M. Wyer, Brooklyn Botanical Garden, enter at 150 Eastern Pkwy., 7:00

Swamped, with Elliott Sharp and ten canoes, the Gowanus Dredgers Boathouse, 125-153 Second St., Brooklyn, 7:30

Mass Appeal Mandolins, with the New York Mandolin Orchestra, Theodore Roosevelt Park, 6:30

Muscota Marsh Harmony, with singers Kristen Kasarjian, George Kasarjian, Jeff Gavett, and Nina Dante and speaker operators John Hastings, Caroline Hastings, Terrance Solomone, and Kim Blair, Muscota Marsh, Inwood Park, 7:45

Make Music New York After Party, with Supermoon and Nation Beat, DROM, 85 Ave. A, 9:00

CHARLIE PARKER JAZZ FESTIVAL 25th ANNIVERSARY

Multiple locations
August 23-27, free (some events require advance RSVP)
cityparksfoundation.org/charlieparker

City Parks Foundation’s annual Charlie Parker Jazz Festival turns twenty-five this year with a series of special events paying tribute to Bird, who lived in New York City from 1939 until his death in 1955 at the age of thirty-four. “In honor of this milestone we have expanded the program to five days, partnered with local institutions on family jazz events and open jam sessions, and are presenting a full evening of dance in the lineup for the first time. We hope all New Yorkers, young and old, jazz aficionados and new fans alike, will join us in honoring the legacy of Charlie Parker and jazz in New York City,” City Parks Foundation executive director Heather Lubov said in a statement. On August 23 at 7:00, the National Jazz Museum in Harlem will host “Harlem Speaks,” a conversation with alto saxophonist Lee Konitz. At 7:30, the New School will present “Bird with Strings,” an ensemble of students and veteran players performing the 1950 album Charlie Parker with Strings, featuring such classics as “April in Paris” and “Summertime.” At 10:00 pm, the Shed Open Jam takes place at Silvana. On August 24 at 5:30, Jazz in the Garden features Art Baron playing at the 6BC Botanical Garden. At 6:00, the New School for Jazz & Contemporary Music will screen Kasper Collin’s 2017 documentary I Called Him Morgan. At 7:00 in Marcus Garvey Park, Jason Samuels Smith’s “Chasin’ the Bird Remixed” brings together tap dancer and choreographer Smith, Dormeshia Sumbry-Edwards, and Derick K. Grant dancing to Parker’s “Donna Lee,” “Salt Peanuts,” and others, preceded by a Walk to SummerStage with the New York Road Runners Club. And at 9:00, the “In Bird We Trust” jam session takes place at Ginny’s Supper Club. On August 25 at 5:30, Jazz in the Garden features Bill Saxton in the Harlem Rose Garden, while at 7:00 the Anat Cohen Tentet plays in Marcus Garvey Park. On August 26 at 3:00, Marcus Garvey Park will be home to a fab concert with the Lee Konitz Quartet, Terri Lyne Carrington and Social Science, Louis Hayes, and Charenée Wade. And on Sunday, the grand finale moves to Tompkins Square Park at 3:00 with the Joshua Redman Quartet, Lou Donaldson, Tia Fuller, and Alicia Olatuja. All events are free; some require advance RSVP.

CENTRAL PARK CONSERVANCY FILM FESTIVAL: I AM LEGEND

Sam and Robert Neville (Will Smith) fight to survive the zombie apocalypse in New York City in I AM LEGEND

SEE/CHANGE: I AM LEGEND (Francis Lawrence, 2007)
Central Park
Landscape between Sheep Meadow & 72nd St. Cross Dr.
Wednesday, August 24, free, 8:00
Festival runs August 22-27
www.centralparknyc.org
www.iamlegendmovie.com

Director Francis Lawrence’s modern-day update of Richard Matheson’s classic 1954 novel, I Am Legend, is a tense, nonstop thriller, liberally adapted by screenwriters Mark Protosevich (The Cell) and Akiva Goldsman (I, Robot). While the book was a claustrophobic masterpiece, the film opens things up dramatically, with Robert Neville (Will Smith), the last survivor of a supposed cancer cure that turned into a deadly virus, riding the streets of New York City every day in a fancy car with his dog, Sam. In addition to hunting wild game that leaps through Midtown, Neville, an army scientist who is still searching for an antidote in his makeshift basement laboratory, kills cells of infected vampiric beings that have more in common with the violent creatures of 28 Days Later than the slow-moving zombies of Night of the Living Dead. Every night Neville barricades himself and Sam into their apartment overlooking Washington Square Park and dreams of the events that brought him to this point, centered on his desperate attempt to save his wife (Salli Richardson) and daughter (Willow Smith, Will’s real-life daughter). I Am Legend was actually filmed in New York, with pivotal scenes shot in and around Madison Square Park, Grand Central Terminal, the South Street Seaport, and a barren Park Ave., lending it a stark, frightening reality. Smith excels as Neville, his eyes quickly shifting from hope to disappointment, from promise to pain, and Lawrence (Constantine, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire) does a marvelous job of translating the book’s inner monologue into a postapocalyptic visual nightmare. (The story was previously made into the 1964 film The Last Man on Earth, starring Vincent Price.) I Am Legend is screening August 24 at the Central Park Conservancy Film Festival, which runs August 22 to 27, beginning with School of Rock (August 22) and The Last Dragon (August 23) in Marcus Garvey Park, then moving to Central Park for I Am Legend, Tootsie (August 25), Desperately Seeking Susan (August 26), and Stuart Little (August 27).

CHARLIE PARKER JAZZ FESTIVAL 2016

The legacy of Charlie Bird Parker will be celebrated in annual free SummerStage festival

The legacy of Charlie “Bird” Parker will be celebrated at annual free SummerStage festival

SummerStage
The New School, Marcus Garvey Park, Tompkins Square Park
August 24-28, free
www.cityparksfoundation.org

“Music is your own experience, your own thoughts, your wisdom. If you don’t live it, it won’t come out of your horn,” saxophone great Charlie Parker once said. “They teach you there’s a boundary line to music. But, man, there’s no boundary line to art.” The Kansas City native, known as Bird and Yardbird, blew away all boundaries on his sax during a career that was cut short by his death in 1955 at the age of thirty-four. His legacy will once again be celebrated at the annual Charlie Parker Jazz Festival as part of the City Parks Foundation free SummerStage programming. This year’s tribute begins indoors on August 24 at 7:30 (free with advance RSVP here) with a screening of N. C. Heikin’s documentary Sound of Redemption: The Frank Morgan Story at the New School, followed by a Q&A with alto sax player and Morgan protégée Grace Kelly and Morgan manager Reggie Marshall. On August 25 at 7:30 (RSVP here), the New School will host a screening of Bruce Spiegel’s Bill Evans: Time Remembered, followed by a discussion with Spiegel. The live music gets cooking August 26 at 6:00 in Marcus Garvey Park with performances by Jason Lindner: Breeding Ground, Antoinette Montague, and DJ Greg Caz, followed the next day in the Harlem park by a 2:00 master class with Samuel Coleman and a 3:00 concert with the Randy Weston African Rhythms Sextet, Cory Henry & the Funk Apostles, the Artistry of Jazzmeia Horn, and Charles Turner III. The festival concludes on August 28 at 3:00 in Tompkins Square Park with the great lineup of DeJohnette – Holland – Moran, Allan Harris, the Donny McCaslin Group, and Kelly.