Childish Gambino Little Island. Photo: Emilio Madrid
This past weekend at Little Island, five-time Grammy Award-winning superstar Childish Gambino celebrated a first listen of music from his new album, Bando Stone & The New World, with the interactive experience CHILDISH GAMBINO LIVE FROM LITTLE ISLAND.
Little Island’s first annual, four-month-long summer season of world premieres, which kicked off on June 1, features a total of nine newly commissioned pieces. Little Island’s new arts program moves towards the future with a commitment to a multi-year roster of original work, all commissioned by and developed at Little Island. Bookended by the premiere of choreographer Twyla Tharp’s newest work How Long Blues and a 90-minute remix of Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro in which outré opera diva Anthony Roth Costanzo sings every leading role, the season offers premieres of varying scales across all areas of performance – including music, dance, theater, opera, comedy, jazz, pop, and funk, all outdoors and directly sited on the Hudson River at 14th Street in New York City. The Amph, the park’s 700-seat amphitheater, will house larger scale performances at a $25 ticket price, while The Glade, the park’s 200-seat venue, will be home to more intimate works, all of which will be completely free to the public.
This week on Little Island, performances of Open Throat begin on Wednesday, July 10 at the Amph. A theatrical adaptation of the acclaimed and award-winning novella of the same name by Henry Hoke, Open Throat will star Chris Perfetti, the actor from the Emmy® and Golden Globe® Award-winning “Abbott Elementary,” Lortel Award nominee Jo Lampert, and Calvin Leon Smith, alongside Marinda Anderson, Alex Hernandez, Layla Khoshnoudi, Ryan King, Susannah Perkins, and Steven Wendt. The production will run through Sunday, July 14. Taking the Glade stage from Wednesday, July 10 – Sunday, July 14 as part of The Glade Series, Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Suzan-Lori Parks’s Tell Me More series will thoughtfully pair a musical performance with a conversation between Parks and an expert from a different field. On July 10, for an evening themed “Greens & Blues,” a set by blues legend Ruthie Foster will precede a talk between Parks and Majora Carter, founder of Sustainable South Bronx. Other guests include designer Daisy Wang, who will also dress Lori-Parks, freestyle MC Corey James Gray, Columbia astronomy professor Jane Huang, harpist Brandee Younger, historian Eric Foner, and Parks’ own Psychedelic Soap Box, a post-bop jazz collective with spoken word. On Saturday July 13, Parks will invite the audience into one of her engaging Watch Me Work sessions, alongside a very special guest, before taking the stage with her band Sula & the Joyful Noise.
Tickets to Little Island’s summer season of performances are available for purchase on littleislandtickets.com, TodayTix.com, or by downloading the TodayTix app.
ABOUT LITTLE ISLAND
Little Island, the 2.4-acre park that sits along the Hudson River, opened in May 2021 and has since been enjoyed by 4.6 million visitors. In 2013, Barry Diller, in partnership with Hudson River Park Trust leadership, embarked on the unique opportunity to envision a solution for the repair and reactivation of Pier 54, which had been badly damaged by Hurricane Sandy. The park was designed as an entirely new type of public space for New York, one that would create an immersive experience of nature and art. Born from a collaboration of the UK-based Heatherwick Studio and the New York-based landscape architecture firm MNLA, led by Signe Nielsen, the park’s imaginative design offers all New Yorkers and visitors a new public space that is dynamic, captivating, and restorative.
Little Island is operated year-round by a 50-member staff co-helmed by Producing Artistic Director Zack Winokur and Executive Director Laura Clement.
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