[music]

Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC, and yes, summer is coming. With it, New York's culture scene shifts into overdrive with festivals, concerts, movies, and more seemingly around every corner or on every rooftop or parking lot. With help from WNYC and Gothamist culture and art desk, we are wrapping up our shows during this membership drive with your guide to what to look forward to this summer. Today, we're joined by culture and arts editor Steve Smith. Let's see. Do we have just Steve?

Steve Smith: That's correct.

Brian Lehrer: Yes, just Steve. Okay. There was another reporter who was going to join us but who I think is out sick today. Steve, hey, welcome to the show today. Thanks for coming up.

Steve Smith: Hi, Brian. How are you doing?

Brian Lehrer: Doing okay. You have already published one guide to summer fun on Gothamist, most of it free, and I understand there's more coming tomorrow so this is just the start. Today, we're going to look at some of the mostly free concerts in store, starting with maybe the biggest music festivals SummerStage and Celebrate Brooklyn!.

We'll talk about some of the bigger, mostly paid concerts tomorrow and focus on classical and jazz later in the series plus theater dance, outdoor movie screenings, lots of events around the 50th anniversary of hip hop this summer. We'll break that out separately so much. SummerStage or Capital One City Parks Foundation SummerStage to give its full title is massive. Something like 80 events this year?

Steve Smith: Yes. We all remember when it used to be synonymous with Central Park SummerStage, but it's ranging throughout the boroughs now. I guess you get a good tag like SummerStage, you can spread that umbrella a lot more widely. Yes, there are a lot of events happening at Central Park's Rumsey Playfield just as we'd expect, but now, you'll also find events at Marcus Garvey Park in Harlem and Tompkins Square Park in the East Village, Von King Park in Bed-Stuy, the Coney Island Amphitheater, Crotona Park in the Bronx, and Stapleton Waterfront Park in Staten Island. They are all listed on the SummerStage website now.

Brian Lehrer: What's the first concert?

Steve Smith: Well, it's kind of a matter of perspective to some extent because Central Park's Rumsey Playfield is hosting a few paid benefit concerts on June 3rd and 4th, but the first free concert of the season, the official kickoff of the season if you like, features the Alabama soul group St. Paul and the Broken Bones performing on June 10th. That bill includes two really, really strong local openers. There's the female-fronted discodelic combo Say She She and Harlem's eclectic irresistible Wenzel and the Shakes who I heartily recommend.

Brian Lehrer: Awesome. All of the concerts in the other parks are free, but some at Rumsey Playfield are "benefit concerts," so they charge for some headliners to fund the rest?

Steve Smith: That's right. Some of the bigger shows include, as I said, opening weekend on June 4th, there's a show by Indigo Girls. The things on my calendar include the blues icon, Buddy Guy is playing a farewell concert. He's leaving the road and he's playing on June 18th. Noel Gallagher, formerly of Oasis, is bringing his High Flying Birds on a double bill with Garbage on July 10th, and the iconic Mexican alt-rock band Café Tacvba is playing on July 24th. That's kind of a short list. There are more, and some of them are already selling out, so it's worth jumping on those quickly.

Brian Lehrer: All right. Let's jump on to Celebrate Brooklyn! or BRIC Celebrate Brooklyn, exclamation point, to exclude the organization that runs it, B-R-I-C, BRIC, and its important punctuation. This is even older than SummerStage. Celebrate Brooklyn! turns 37 this year, and this series is all free and in the bandshell all of it in Prospect Park?

Steve Smith: That's right, now known as the Lena Horne Bandshell. Now, what's new and different about this year's Celebrate Brooklyn! festival, it's the first time they've engaged an artist-curator, Brooklyn singer-songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist Taja Cheek. She performs under the name L'Rain, and she's really helped them to design a series in which every evening is really conceived as a whole.

The opening acts are particularly chosen to compliment headliners. The series includes more than 20 free and benefit concerts, dance performances, a screening of the film Birdman with live music, and celebrations marking Juneteenth and the 50th anniversary of hip hop. Again, a pretty extensive range within a more compact series.

Brian Lehrer: For the free concerts in either of these series, any tips on seating? Do you have to get there at eight o'clock in the morning for the evening concert, anything like that?

Steve Smith: Eight o'clock in the morning might be extreme, although for some of the biggest concerts, if you really, really need to be up close and personal when Garbage plays at Central Park, then yes. Showing up early is always a tip. Really, I mean the only tip that I have is get there as early as you can, get out as frequently as you can, and take chances on things that you don't know anything about because these free concerts are really a part of what's best about living in this city.

Brian Lehrer: We talked a little now about SummerStage. We talked a little bit about Celebrate Brooklyn!. How about some of the other music festivals to look out for?

Steve Smith: If you're crossing Midtown on your way to a performance on Broadway, you are likely to stumble across something in Times Square. The TSQ Live series is already underway, and it includes a wide variety of performers, mostly music, but some DJs and some comedians. These performers are mostly up-and-coming talent, but they're being booked by organizations like Carnegie Hall and Pioneer Works in Brooklyn and Jazz at Lincoln Center.

There is something worth looking forward to almost every weeknight and weekend night in Times Square and the Pedestrian Plaza on Broadway right around 5:00 PM, so you can actually catch a free show on your way to that expensive Broadway show. Bryant Park is hosting its very, very popular Picnic Performances series. Again, there too, the emphasis is on collaborations with local arts organizations.

The season opens on June 1st with Puccini's La bohème presented by City Opera, and as you said, we'll be talking more about classical music in days to come, but other presenters who are involved include Jazzmobile, Joe's Pub, Classical Theater of Harlem, and again Carnegie Hall. There are some really nice things happening in Bryant Park. I have been told, by the way, that you don't want to miss the US debut of Turkish singer Gaye Su Akyol. This is an artist I don't know, but I have it on great authority that on August 26th you will want to be at Bryant Park.

Then talking about a few other series, the very, very popular series happening on the Little Island, which is literally the manmade island park just off the coast in the Hudson River near where the Whitney Museum is, they've done ticketed events in the past in the biggest of their amphitheaters, but this year, they're focusing entirely on free events. The idea there is not really-- it's not a destination where you're going to see a particular act more so much as you're basically going to hang out, enjoy the vibe, get some free music in one of their intimate spaces. It's just a nice place to be during the summer. Then I would be--

Brian Lehrer: I haven't been over there yet. How many seats do they have? Do you know the amphitheater size there on the Little Island?

Steve Smith: The amphitheater that they're not using seats a few hundred, but the two spaces that they are using, I would say around 100 to 200. It's really quite intimate in those spaces.

Brian Lehrer: Very nice. All right. There we have to leave it for today with WNYC culture and art editor Steve Smith. I know you're coming back with us later in the series where we preview things to do around here this summer, so thanks for starting us off today with some great stuff.

Steve Smith: Thank you, Brian.

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