Photo Credit: Ryan Muir
Summer 2022 Lineup Announcement bryantpark.org/picnics
Free Music, Theater, and Dance Events on the Bryant Park Lawn Presented by Bank of America
Bryant Park’s 30th Anniversary Season Features Events in Partnership with Renowned NYC Arts Institutions
Bryant Park Corporation announces the lineup for its summer performing arts series, Bryant Park Picnic Performances presented by Bank of America. Twenty-six live music, dance, and theater events – all starting at 7pm – will take place at Midtown Manhattan’s Bryant Park between late May and September. All performances are free to the public and designed to be enjoyed casually – no tickets required – with ample seating available and free picnic blankets for audience members to borrow.
The 2021 season of Picnic Performances solidified the series’ role as a vital outdoor platform for New York City’s arts institutions, many of which are returning for 2022. Also returning are the popular performance livestreams, which can be watched on the park’s social media channels for free for more than 20 shows.
Season highlights include:
- New York City Opera, “The People’s Opera,” begins the season (5/27) with a one-night-only, staged and costumed production with orchestral accompaniment of Rossini’s The Barber of Seville. Later in the season New York City Opera brings its annual LGBTQ+ Pride in the Parkconcert (6/17) as well as additional fully staged, dressed and live music-supported productions of Verdi’s La traviata (8/12) and Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor (9/2).
- Major dance companies and rising stars perform at Contemporary Dance in June with curation by Tiffany Rea-Fisher, featuring Ayodele Casel, Ariel Rivka Dance, Works & Process at the Guggenheim’s The Missing Element, Music From The Sole, EMERGE125, and a Social Latin Dance Class with Ballet Hispánico.
- Bryant Park hosts its first-ever Open Rehearsal Residencies on the stage with dance companies Jamel Gaines Creative Outlet and Athomasproject.
- Six up-and-coming bands perform at Emerging Music Festival (6/24, 6/25), now curated by AdHoc.
- Carnegie Hall Citywide presents five nights of genre-spanning music in July, featuring Afro Latin Jazz Ensemble (7/1), The Baylor Project (7/8), Squirrel Nut Zippers (7/15), The Broadway Sinfonietta (7/25), and more TBA.
- Jazzmobile brings 8-time Grammy Nominee and Latin Jazz legend Bobby Sanabria and his 21-piece Multiverse Big Band (7/23).
- Asian American Arts Alliance brings sets from composer-producers Rafiq Bhatia and Ian Chang (8/19).
- Habibi Festival, a celebration of music from the Middle East and North Africa, has its Bryant Park premiere (8/26) in partnership with Joe’s Pub.
- The Town Hall presents Grammy Award-winning Eighth Blackbird, playing the music of John Cage (8/29).
- Acclaimed jazz pianists Aaron Diehl and Orrin Evans perform as a duo in partnership with Steinway (9/8).
- Accordion Festival is back with three world music performers featuring the accordion, with Heart of Afghanistan and more (9/16).
- The season closes with American Symphony Orchestra celebrating their 60th anniversary (9/17).
Bryant Park Corporation’s President Dan Biederman says, “Thanks to Bank of America’s commitment, Picnic Performances brings world-class music, theater, and dance to more than a quarter of a million people each summer – both in-person on the lawn and through the livestreams.”
Attendees may bring their own food or purchase from on-site food and beverage vendors near the Lawn. At most performances, attendees can purchase food from a rotating line-up of local NYC vendors curated by Hester Street Fair. At all performances, Stout NYC offers cheese and charcuterie boards as well as a selection of beer, wine, frosé, and non-alcoholic beverages for purchase. COVID-19 vaccinations and masks are not currently required but Bryant Park will continue to monitor and follow updated New York City and New York State COVID-19 guidelines throughout the summer as necessary.
This spring marks the 30th anniversary of Bryant Park’s 1992 reopening after an extensive redesign and revitalization. Through Bryant Park Corporation’s commitment to revitalizing Midtown Manhattan, the park has evolved into an urban oasis that is home to a lush lawn and extensive plantings and many free activities like games, fitness classes, and literary discussions. Much of Bryant Park Corporation’s success is a result of its vigilant care and robust year-round programming including iconic, world-class events and experiences such as Movie Nights, Picnic Performances, and Bank of America Winter Village. Celebrations for the park’s 30-year milestone will continue throughout the spring and summer months for locals and tourists to enjoy.
Additional artist and performance information will be available in the coming months. For the most current information please visit bryantpark.org/picnics.
Bryant Park Picnic Performances 2022 Programming Details
New York City Opera
Friday, May 27 at 7PM
The Barber of Seville
Gioachino Rossini’s sparkling music animates the hijinks of Figaro, opera’s most famous barber.
Friday, June 17 at 7PM
Pride in the Park
New York City Opera’s annual LGBTQ+ Pride concert will feature a diverse program of selections from opera and musical theater sung by stars from City Opera’s Pride Series.
Friday, August 12 at 7PM
La traviata
An abridged adaptation of Verdi’s classic that inspired Moulin Rouge, with instantly recognizable tunes famously featured in Pretty Woman. Soprano Ekaterina Siurina and tenor Charles Castronovo appear with Michael Chioldi, world-renowned baritone and star of last summer’s Rigoletto (a role he recently stepped into at the Metropolitan Opera for a series of critically acclaimed performances), with City Opera Music Director Maestro Constantine Orbelian at the helm.
Friday, September 2 at 7PM
Lucia di Lammermoor
Think Romeo and Juliet, but set in Scotland. Donizetti’s brilliant score is the height of drama and the pinnacle of the Bel Canto style in this abridged version starring world-renowned soprano Sarah Coburn and conducted by Constantine Orbelian.
Contemporary Dance Curated by Tiffany Rea-Fisher
Friday, June 3 at 7PM
Performers TBA
Saturday, June 4 at 7PM
Featuring Ariel Rivka Dance (Contemporary Modern) and
Works & Process at the Guggenheim’s The Missing Element (Beat-Boxing and Street Dance)
Ariel Rivka Dance (ARD) is an all-female contemporary dance company based in New Jersey led by Artistic Director Ariel Grossman. ARD’s mission is to champion female creatives through original choreography, commissioned music, and curated family and educational programming. Through movement, ARD creates a community of vulnerability and acceptance, providing opportunities for hope and connection.
Commissioned by Works & Process, the performing arts series at the Guggenheim, The Missing Element, fuses the music making of beatbox with street dance. Creative directors Chris Celiz, a world champion beatboxer, and b-boy Anthony Vito Rodriguez “Invertebrate” assemble a formidable cast including members of The Beatbox House including Amit Bhowmick, Celiz, Neil Meadows “NaPoM,” Gene Shinozaki, and Kenny Urban, and dancers including flexer Joseph Carella “Klassic,” Krumper Brian “HallowDreamz” Henry, and breakers Graham Reese and Rodriguez “Invertebrate”. Created at the peak of the pandemic in two Works & Process bubble residencies, The Missing Element is an immersive experience exploring the universal elements of earth, wind, fire, water, and space. The performance will be an adventure of music and dance, where all sound featured is 100% human-generated.
Friday, June 10 at 7PM
Featuring EMERGE125 (Contemporary Modern) and Ayodele Casel (Tap)
EMERGE125 is a Black female-led hub for dance performance, creation, and education. The organization operates dual homes in Harlem and Lake Placid, New York, while serving audiences both locally and around the world. EMERGE125 has established itself as a leader by setting new standards for dancer care; creating innovative, cross-disciplinary collaborations with leading artists; and using movement as a catalyst for community building: expanding the reach, purpose, and impact of the art of dance.
Ayodele Casel, an award-winning “tap dancer and choreographer of extraordinary depth” (The New York Times) and one of The New York Times‘ “Biggest Breakout Stars of 2019,” most recently serves as Tap Choreographer for the highly anticipated Broadway revival of Funny Girl. She also created and choreographed Chasing Magic, a dance film and concert encapsulating the wonder of collaboration and artistry. Ayodele was also a 2019-2020 fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University and Artist in Residence at Harvard University. Ayodele has the privilege of being a featured tap dancer honoring the art form of tap on a 2021 US Postal Service Forever Stamp.
Saturday, June 11 at 7PM
Featuring Ballet Hispánico’s Social Latin Dance Class and Music From the Sole (Tap)
Ballet Hispánico brings communities together to celebrate and explore Latino cultures through innovative dance productions, transformative dance training, and community engagement. For fifty years Ballet Hispánico has been the leading voice intersecting artistic excellence and advocacy, and is now the largest Latinx cultural organization in the United States and one of America’s Cultural Treasures. Ballet Hispánico brings communities together to celebrate and explore Latino cultures through innovative dance productions, transformative dance training, and enduring community engagement experiences.
Music From The Sole is a tap dance and live music company that celebrates tap’s Afro-diasporic roots, particularly its connections to Afro-Brazilian dance and music, and its lineage to forms like house dance and passinho (Brazilian funk). Led by Brazilian choreographer Leonardo Sandoval and by composer Gregory Richardson, their work embraces tap’s unique nature as a blend of sound and movement, incorporating wide-ranging influences like samba, passinho, Afro-Cuban, jazz, and house.
Emerging Music Festival Curated by Ad Hoc
Friday, June 24 at 7PM and Saturday, June 25 at 7PM
Artists TBA
Carnegie Hall Citywide
Friday, July 1 at 7PM
Featuring Afro Latin Jazz Ensemble
Program featuring highlights and hits from the Grammy-winning Afro Latin Jazz Ensemble, showcasing the principal musicians from the Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra and one of the newest members, Andrew Andron, on the piano.
Friday, July 8 at 7PM
Featuring The Baylor Project
What is “The Baylor Project?” A husband. A wife. An astonishing duo built on love, family, faith, culture and community. These are the things that power The Baylor Project, featuring Jean Baylor and Marcus Baylor. This enticing collaboration is steeped in the heart and soul of jazz. As the children of pastors, Marcus and Jean’s musical roots were planted deep within the church, and it was there that the road was paved for the influence of jazz, gospel, blues and soul to make its mark. Their debut album, The Journey, released on their own label, Be A Light, topped the Billboard Jazz Chart at Number 8 in 2017; and, a year later, they garnered two Grammy nominations for Best Jazz Vocal Album and Best Traditional R&B Performance. Two years later during one of the most challenging years in recent history, The Baylors released their single, “Sit On Down,” in 2020, which earned a 3rd Grammy nomination for Best Traditional R&B Performance, solidifying The Baylor Project as an undeniable force. Their second album, Generations, released in 2021, earned the duo its first NAACP Image Award win for Outstanding Jazz Album- Vocal and it’s 4th Grammy nomination for Best Jazz Vocal Album. Generations, a cultural anthology rooted in everyday life experiences, became the #1 jazz vocal album on the JazzWeek radio charts and the standout song “We Swing (The Cypher)” was named among NPR Music’s 100 Best Songs of 2021.
Friday, July 15 at 7PM
Featuring Squirrel Nut Zippers
Squirrel Nut Zippers just released their new album Lost Songs of Doc Souchon as the follow up to the critically acclaimed Beasts of Burgundy. In it are ten brand new tracks, a combination of newly penned Zippers songs, along with a few tunes from long gone times. “This new album was inspired by all of the mysterious characters from the history of New Orleans jazz music,” commented band leader Jimbo Mathus. “It speaks to the hidden roots of where our aesthetic, interests and philosophy comes from. It pulls on the hidden thread.”
Friday, July 22 at 7PM
Featuring The Broadway Sinfonietta
The Broadway Sinfonietta, the acclaimed all women and majority women-of-color orchestra, makes its highly anticipated live debut with a full 25-piece orchestra under the musical direction of Macy Schmidt. The performance features a program of Sinfonietta signatures such as “You’re Gonna Hear From Me,” hits from recent projects such as Ratatouille, and previews of their upcoming debut album, as well as brand new commissions and arrangements. With an orchestral twist spanning indie pop, classic Broadway, and contemporary musical theatre, the evening’s program will explore the idea of “finding your voice” — and what to do with it once you have. Led by a rotation of accomplished women guest conductors, the program will also feature a slate of Broadway guest vocalists to be announced.
Friday, July 29 at 7PM
TBA
Jazzmobile
Saturday, July 23 at 7PM
Featuring Bobby Sanabria Multiverse Big Band
Coming to the Bryant Park stage is the renowned native Nuyorican drummer percussionist, composer, arranger, activist, Bobby Sanabria, and his 21-piece multi-Grammy nominated Multiverse Big Band. This performance will combine elements of Jazz, funk, and R & B, as well as Afro-Cuban, Brazilian, Puerto Rican rhythms and more into what Fernando Gonzalez of JazzTimes magazine has described as “… a musical juggernaut.” Ben Ratliff of The New York Times says “… Mr. Sanabria expands the possibilities, moving the sound of bands like that of Puente, Machito, with all the heft and intricacy and clave-based dance rhythm, into the harmonically oriented sophistication of current New York jazz players. It’s New York up and down, and back and forth across the last century, from the street to the mambo palaces to the conservatories.”
Asian American Arts Alliance
Friday, August 19 at 7PM
Featuring Rafiq Bhatia and Ian Chang
The New York Times proclaims “Rafiq Bhatia is writing his own musical language,” heralding him as “one of the most intriguing figures in music today.” A guitarist, composer, producer, and sound artist “who refuses to be pinned to one genre, culture or instrument,” Bhatia “treats his guitar, synthesizers, drum machines and electronic effects as architectural elements,” the Times writes. “Sound becomes contour; music becomes something to step into rather than merely follow.” Bhatia’s 2018 album Breaking Englishfinds a visceral common ground between ecstatic avant-jazz, mournful soul, tangled strings and building-shaking electronics, resulting in a “stunningly focused new sound” (Chicago Tribune) that resembles “science fiction on a blockbuster scale” (The Washington Post). 2020’s Standards Vol. 1 (EP) renders repertoire from the American songbook “completely deconstructed, infused with brand new textures and electronic effects, dreamlike and beautiful” (BBC). Bhatia has presented his music live in dozens of performances across three continents. He has been commissioned by the Kronos Quartet, Cincinnati Symphony, Walker Art Center, Liquid Music, Newfields, The Jazz Gallery, Toledo Museum of Art, and more. Bhatia has collaborated with Arooj Aftab, Michael Cina, Dave Douglas, Vijay Iyer, Okkyung Lee, Billy Hart, Helado Negro, Cécile McLorin Salvant, Moses Sumney and many others. Since 2014, Bhatia has been a member of the band Son Lux. Together, they have released three albums and numerous EPs, and given over 500 performances worldwide. Most recently, they scored the film Everything Everywhere All At Once for A24, collaborating with David Byrne, André Benjamin, Mitski, Moses Sumney, Randy Newman, and more. Bhatia is a Jerome Foundation Composer/Sound Artist Fellow and adjunct faculty of the New School’s Performer-Composer Master of Music program. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Deemed “one of music’s greatest drummers” by NPR, Ian Chang brings electronic music to the physical realm, exploring the relationship between human and machine and exuding an intuitive physicality, while meshing off-kilter rhythmic ideas with hypnotic textures and exploring the edges of IDM, ambient, free jazz, and much more with futuristic creative abandon. City Slang Records released Chang’s debut full-length album 属 Belonging in 2020. In nine concise, largely instrumental pop songs, Chang conjures a personal cosmos: the listener feels as if we might reach out and touch 属 Belonging‘s jagged and tender aural sculptures. At every level, his music sings with earnest and deceptive simplicity. The album’s melodies are intimate, its rhythms rewarding, and yet, just beneath the surface glimmers innovation, as if the neurons firing in each melodic idea have become audible. When Chang describes his creative process, the phrase “third culture” keeps coming up. Born and raised in Hong Kong, Chang was shaped by the city’s diversity and vibrancy. He moved to New York in 2007 to pursue music and spent a decade building an impressive roster of progressive pop collaborators such as Moses Sumney, CHVRCHES, Joan As Police Woman, and Matthew Dear, among others, all while performing internationally and recording as a member of Son Lux and Landlady. Together, Son Lux has released three albums and numerous EPs, given over 500 performances worldwide, and most recently scored the film Everything Everywhere All at Once for A24, collaborating with David Byrne, André Benjamin, Mitski, Moses Sumney, Randy Newman, and more. Chang now lives in Dallas, Texas.
Habibi Festival with Joe’s Pub
Friday, August 26 at 7PM
Featuring Esraa Warda, Firas Zreik, Yacine Boularès, and AJOYO
Esraa Warda is New York’s emerging dance artist and educator specializing in Algerian and Moroccan traditional dance forms. A child of the Algerian diaspora, Warda is a cultural warrior advocating for the representation and preservation of North African, women-led dance traditions and the decolonization of euro-centricity, orientalism, and patriarchy in dance. Featured in VOGUE Arabia, Warda “takes Algerian dance from relative obscurity to the limelight … In a society focused on all things svelte, there is a charm in seeing a woman of Esraa’s size unabashedly, fiercely, and proudly …” Her dance workshops and lectures have trail-blazed their way to educational institutions such as Cornell University, Wellesley College, King’s College (London), and University of Ottawa. She performs with notable North African women’s groups such as Bnat el Houariyat (Marrakech) and often performs internationally in New York, Paris, Belgium, Casablanca, and London.
Firas Zreik is a Palestinian Kanun player, composer, arranger snd educator based in New York City. He has worked, recorded & performed with international artists from the highest caliber, such as Roger Waters, Shankar Mahadevan, Shreya Ghoshal, Simon Shaheen, Bassam Saba, Amal Murkus, Fabrizio Cassol, Amir Al-Saffar, Aynur Dogan, Raghu Dixit, Marwan Khoury, Elias Karam, Abeer Nehme and many more. In addition, he performed all over the United States, Europe and the Middle East, both as a Kanun player and as a musical director in some of the most prestigious venues and festivals in the world, such as Boston Symphony Hall, Lincoln Center, Carthage International Festival, Savannah Music Festival, Institut du Monde Arabe, Teatro Mediterraneo, and many more. Zreik is the lead Kanun player and soloist for The National Arab Orchestra, which is among the finest worldwide in that genre. He’s also the lead Kanun player for legendary Oud virtuoso Simon Shaheen, as well as the musical director of Amal Murkus’s band, which he also recorded on her latest album, in addition to producing many of her recent songs. Zreik is an ambassador of Medinea Artists Network, a prestigious European music network that connects together highly acclaimed young musicians from all over the Mediterranean. As an educator, Zreik has given workshops and masterclasses at Tufts University, NYU, Berklee College of Music, The Arabic Music Retreat, Circle for World Arts and many more. He has so far released two original singles, one EP, and he’s currently upon releasing a full original album with his band.
Hailed by Radio France Internationale as “a Tunisian man in NY, one of the most talented jazzmen of his generation,” Yacine Boularès is French-Tunisian saxophonist, composer and curator. After graduating from the Paris National Conservatory, Boularès moves to New York on a Fulbright scholarship in 2009 to attend the New School for Jazz. New York City exposed him to a myriad of different music. Soon he started touring with Fela Kuti’s ex-drummer Jojo Kuo and Haitian Kompa legends Tabou Combo. In their music, he found a deep echo to his Tunisian roots. These influences urge him to seek his own identity and his explorations of North and West African rhythms led to the creation of AJOYO, a brew of African traditional, jazz and soul. AJOYO released two albums, in 2015 and 2020. In 2014 Boularès is featured on Placido Domingo’s Encanto Del Mar as a soloist and arranger. There, he met cellist Vincent Ségal, which spurred the idea to explore the Tunisian Stambeli repertoire with drummer Nasheet Waits. In 2015 the trio, Abu Sadiya, is granted the French American Jazz Exchange grant, the Arab Fund for the Arts and Culture and the Brooklyn Arts Fund. Their album, released in 2017, was hailed by Le Monde as “a glittering instrumental suite, all fluidity and golden colors.” In 2019 Boularès is selected to be a part of the Joe’s Pub Working Group and to develops the concept of Ifriqiya, a multimedia performance exploring the Afro Arabic rhythmic traditions through film and composition. His residency also leads to the creation of the Habibi Festival in New York, the first US music festival dedicated to contemporary Arabic cultures. In 2020, as a reaction to the shutdown of the music scene in New York City and to the Black Lives Matter uprising, Boularès co-founded Rise up Brooklyn, a live streaming festival showcasing artists whose work is a catalyst for social change.
AJOYO is the vision of multi-reed player Yacine Boularès, a mystic brew blending African tradition, jazz and soul. AJOYO chants in the name of Tony Allen, Oum Khalsoum, Charlie Parker and Donnie Hathaway. Originally from Tunisia, Yacine Boularès has played sax, composed and arranged music for Cameroonian musicians such as former Fela Kuti drummer Jojo Kuo, the late Martino Atangana, the Haitian Kompa legends Tabou Combo, and for Placido Domingo’s Encanto Del Mar. The project originated in these encounters and influences, as Boularès assembled a band that reconciles his North African and Western heritages. AJOYO celebrates life, love and justice through music: music for the heart, the mind and the body, the kind that is soulful, sophisticated and that makes people want to dance.
The Town Hall: Eighth Blackbird Celebrates John Cage
Monday, August 29 at 7pm
Eighth Blackbird Celebrates John Cage
Grammy Award-winning sextet Eighth Blackbird will perform a tribute to The Town Hall’s 1958 John Cage Retrospective. Founding member Matthew Duvall said: “Reinterpreting the iconic 1958 Town Hall John Cage performance is going to be an extraordinarily fun show. I’m excited to revisit works from the 1958 program with new perspectives, as well as curate new connections. One aspect of Cage’s genius was meticulously constructing composition to fervently guarantee unexpected outcomes. Eighth Blackbird is just as curious as the audience will be to see what happens.”
Steinway Artists Aaron Diehl and Orrin Evans
Thursday, September 8 at 7PM
Featuring piano duets with Aaron Diehl and Orrin Evans
Pianist and composer Aaron Diehl mystifies listeners with his layered artistry. At once temporal and ethereal, his expression transforms the piano into an orchestral vessel in the spirit of beloved predecessors Ahmad Jamal, Erroll Garner and Jelly Roll Morton. Following three critically-acclaimed leader albums on Mack Avenue Records — and live appearances at historic venues from Jazz at Lincoln Center and The Village Vanguard to New York Philharmonic and the Philharmonie de Paris — the American Pianist Association’s 2011 Cole Porter fellow now focuses his attention on what it means to be present within himself. His forthcoming solo record promises an expansion of that exploration in a setting at once unbound and intimate. “Diehl has developed an organic, sophisticated approach” says DownBeat.
During his kaleidoscopic quarter-century as a professional jazz musician, pianist Orrin Evans has become the model of a fiercely independent artist who pushes the envelope in all directions. Never supported by a major label, Evans has ascended to top-of-the-pyramid stature on his instrument, as affirmed by his #1-ranking as “Rising Star Pianist” in the 2018 DownBeat Critics Poll. Grammy nominations for the Smoke Sessions albums The Intangible Between and Presence, by Evans’ raucous, risk-friendly Captain Black Big Band, stamp his bona fides as a bandleader and composer. In addition to CBBB, Evans’ multifarious leader and collaborative projects include the Eubanks Evans Experience (a duo with eminent guitarist Kevin Eubanks); the Brazilian unit Terreno Comum; Evans’ working trio with bassist Luques Curtis and drummer Mark Whitfield, Jr.; and Tar Baby (a collective trio of 20 years standing with bassist Eric Revis and drummer Nasheet Waits). One of Tar Baby’s two 2022 releases will be released on Evans’ imprint, Imani Records, which he founded in 2001 and relaunched in 2018.
Classical Theatre of Harlem
Friday, September 9 at 7PM
Performance Details TBA
The Classical Theatre of Harlem (CTH) provides theatrical productions and theatre-based educational and literary programs in Harlem and beyond. Since its founding in 1999, CTH has prioritized opportunity and access in the theatrical arts: onstage, backstage, in its administration, board, and audience. By leading with diversity, equity and inclusion as its core values, CTH attracts one of the most racially, generationally and socio-economically diverse theatre audiences in New York City. CTH engages with Harlem residents, businesses, schools, and community-based organizations, to directly benefit 18,000 people each year. In fact, CTH is the only professional theatre company above 96th Street dedicated to the classical canon, revivals, new works and musicals. Visit www.cthnyc.org for more information.
Accordion Festival Curated by Ariana Hellerman
Friday, September 16 at 7PM
Featuring Heart of Afghanistan and more TBA
The Heart of Afghanistan project consists of four Afghan musicians; Ahmad Fanoos on vocals and harmonium, and his two sons Elham on piano and Mehran on violin, with Hamid Habibzada on tabla. Together they will tell the story of Afghanistan from its pre-islamic Buddhist heritage through traditional Ghazals based on the Sufi inspired poetry of Rumi and the “Afghan Elvis,” pop icon Ahmad Zahir, of the ’60s and ’70s who took the music of Elvis Presley and translated it into Dari and performed it with a traditional instrument ensemble. The idea is to give a 360-degree view of Afghan culture through music, poetry, art and cultural heritage.
American Symphony Orchestra
Saturday, September 17 at 7PM
Continuing a partnership forged between the American Symphony Orchestra and the Bryant Park Corporation in the wake of COVID-19, the ASO will present a full orchestra concert to celebrate its 60th Anniversary. The orchestra was founded in 1962 by Leopold Stokowski with the mission of providing music within the means of everyone. Music Director Leon Botstein expanded that mission when he joined the ASO in 1992, creating thematic concerts that explore music from the perspective of the visual arts, literature, religion, and history, and reviving rarely performed works that audiences would otherwise never have a chance to hear performed live. On September 17, 2022, the ASO will present a program by composers who have influenced the artistic landscape of New York and works that were inspired by our city.
Complete Line Listings
May/June
May 27: New York City Opera: The Barber of Seville
June 3: Contemporary Dance: Performers TBA
June 4: Contemporary Dance: Ariel Rivka Dance and
Works & Process at The Guggenheim’sThe Missing Element
June 10: Contemporary Dance: EMERGE125 and Ayodele Casel
June 11: Contemporary Dance: Ballet Hispánico’s Social Latin Dance Class and Music From the Sole
June 17: New York City Opera: Pride in the Park
June 24: Emerging Music Festival curated by Ad Hoc
June 25: Emerging Music Festival curated by Ad Hoc
July
July 1: Carnegie Hall Citywide: Afro Latin Jazz Ensemble
July 8: Carnegie Hall Citywide: The Baylor Project
July 15: Carnegie Hall Citywide: Squirrel Nut Zippers
July 22: Carnegie Hall Citywide: The Broadway Sinfonietta
July 23: Jazzmobile: Bobby Sanabria Multiverse Big Band
July 28: Artist TBA
July 29: Carnegie Hall Citywide: Artist TBA
August
August 5: Artist TBA
August 12: New York City Opera: La traviata
August 19: Asian American Arts Alliance: Rafiq Bhatia and Ian Chang
August 26: Habibi Festival with Joe’s Pub: Esraa Warda, Firas Zreik, Yacine Boularès, and AJOYO
August 29: The Town Hall: Eighth Blackbird Celebrates John Cage
September
September 2: New York City Opera: Lucia di Lammermoor
September 8: Steinway Artists Aaron Diehl and Orrin Evans
September 9: Classical Theatre of Harlem
September 16: Accordion Festival: Heart of Afghanistan and More
September 17: American Symphony Orchestra
Follow Bryant Park
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Location and Subway Directions:
Bryant Park is situated behind the New York Public Library in midtown Manhattan, between 40th and 42nd Streets & Fifth and Sixth Avenues. Take the B, D, F, or M train to 42nd Street/Bryant Park; or, take the 7 train to 5th Avenue.
