CNET Networks Entertainment GameSpot | GameFAQs | SportsGamer | MP3.com | TV.com | Metacritic
Print Email Comment Tag It Facebook Digg this
NYC Summerstage kicks off tonight
By Jim Welte - MP3.com
June 15, 2007 at 11:29:00 AM | more stories by this author

City Parks Foundation begins a packed summer of performances in Central Park and throughout the five boroughs.

"Summer's here and the time is right, oh, for dancing in the street..."

Or in the case of New York City--in the parks.

Cassandra Wilson Cassandra Wilson

NYC's City Parks Foundation is set to kick off another summer of concerts tonight with the opening performance for Central Park Summerstage, with acclaimed jazz singer Cassandra Wilson and jazz-blue guitarist Olu Dara, father of the rapper Nas, taking the stage at 7 p.m.

Music fans will have plenty of diverse and star-studded music to choose from, including Television and Apples in Stereo on Saturday and the return of the Beastie Boys to their hometown on August 8. In between, Afrobeat star Femi Kuti will perform on July 10, Café Tacuba and Pacha Massive will headline a Latin music event, and the Decemberists and Grizzly Bear will helm a night of heady indie rock. The Black Crowes will finish off the Summerstage series with a performance on August 9.

Click here for the full Central Park Summerstage schedule.

But outdoor live music won't be limited to Central Park, as the City Parks Foundation has a host of other big names lined up for parks in all five boroughs. Kurtis Blow and DJ GrandWizzard Theodore will perform at Crotona Park in the Bronx on July 25, while dead prez and a host of special guests will play July 24 at Red Hook in Brooklyn. Jazz and soul legend Roy Ayers is set to play July 11 at Brower Park in Brooklyn and again Aug. 2 at Springfield Park in Queens, while soul singer Leela James will play Aug. 15 at Jackie Robinson Park in Manhattan.

Click here for the full City Parks performance schedule.

In addition to the city-operated performances, the long-vacant McCarren Pool in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn has become a go-to spot for weekend outdoor shows. Sponsored by JellyNYC and Helio, this summer's lineup includes TV on the Radio, Man Man, Ted Leo & the Pharmacists, Dengue Fever, Blonde Redhead, Ghostland Observatory, among others.

Click here for the McCarren Pool Party concert schedule.

Print Email Comment Tag It Facebook Digg this

Back to Today's News »

Sign up now to post a comment!
advertisement

Latest News

Iriver\'s unsinkable MP3 player Iriver's unsinkable MP3 player
The Speedo Aquabeat is a waterproof device made for the swimwear maker.

Picture Galleries

Related Artists

Cassandra Wilson

Although her recording career has been somewhat erratic, Cassandra Wilson became one of the top jazz singers of the '90s, a vocalist blessed with a distinctive and flexible voice who is not afraid to take chances. She began playing piano and guitar when she was nine and was working as a vocalist by the mid-'70s, singing a wide variety of...

Olu Dara Olu Dara

Although he didn't record under his own name until 1998, Olu Dara enjoyed a reputation as one of the jazz avant-garde's leading trumpeters from the mid-'70s on. Early-'80s records and performances with the David Murray Octet and the Henry Threadgill Sextet revealed Dara to be a daring, roots-bound soloist, with a modern imagination and a big...

The Decemberists The Decemberists

Colin Meloy leads the Decemberists, a five-piece outfit whose pop sound has listeners comparing the band with the likes of Neutral Milk Hotel and Belle & Sebastian. Meloy, who hails from Missoula, MT, is the main songwriter for the group. Rounding out the lineup are Ezra Holbrook on drums, Nate Query on upright bass, Jenny Conlee on accordion,...

Grizzly Bear Grizzly Bear

Grizzly Bear began as a home recording project for Boston-bred experimentalist Edward Droste, the son of an elementary school teacher, who laid the groundwork for the band's otherworldly debut album on a small hand-held tape recorder while holed up for 15 months in his Greenpoint, Brooklyn, apartment. His homespun D.I.Y. effort took on new life...

Café Tacuba Café Tacuba

With its sizzling mix of ska, rock, hip-hop, and traditional Latin music, Café Tacuba is one of Mexico's hottest bands. One of the "50 Future Latin American Leaders" according to Time magazine, the group continues to share its exciting dance music with audiences throughout Central and South America.

Café Tacuba was formed in the...

Dead Prez Dead Prez

The Florida-based political rap duo Dead Prez consists of Sticman and M-1, a pair of rappers inspired by revolutionaries from Malcom X to Public Enemy. They immersed themselves in political and social studies as they forged their own style of hip-hop, which debuted on the Loud '97 Set Up tape "Food, Clothes and Shelter." They went on to work...

Femi Kuti

The son of Afro-beat legend Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, Femi Kuti spent years playing in his father's band before eventually rising to superstardom following his father's death in the late '90s. Since few artists can match his father's legacy of not only music but influence, Femi's relation as his son is both a blessing and a curse. On the one hand,...

Beastie Boys Beastie Boys

As the first white rap group of any importance, the Beastie Boys received the scorn of critics and strident hip-hop musicians, who accused them of cultural pirating, especially since they began as a hardcore punk group in 1981. But the Beasties weren't pirating -- they treated rap as part of a post-punk musical underground, where the...

Related Albums

Cassandra Wilson "Thunderbird"
Cassandra Wilson
Cassandra Wilson's swinging for her own creative fences this time. The sultry, gentle, acoustic guitars on her last five recordings have been largely jettisoned for a more keyboard-and percussion -friendly approach -- which includes lots of programming and loops. To that end, she's enlisted flavor-of-the-year producer T-Bone Burnett and...
Olu Dara "Neighborhoods"
Olu Dara
"The Crane Wife"
The Decemberists
Grizzly Bear "Yellow House"
Grizzly Bear
On their second album (and Warp debut), Yellow House, Grizzly Bear takes a dramatic leap forward, delivering a collection of songs that sound awe-inspiringly huge and intimate at the same time. While the album is overall more polished and focused than their debut, nowhere is this (literally) clearer than in Yellow House's production. Though the...
Café Tacuba "Cuatro Caminos"
Café Tacuba
Not the Mexican Beatles, Beastie Boys, Radiohead, or any of the other bands that the lazy rock press in America has dubbed Café Tacuba, this is the Mexican Café Tacuba. Furthermore, despite an obnoxious blurb from a music magazine pasted on the outside of the disc, Cuatro Caminos is not the "Rock en Espańol Kid A." Kid A isn't this good. On Café...
"Soldier 2 Soldier"
Dead Prez
Femi Kuti "Fight to Win"
Femi Kuti
With 2000's Shoki Shoki, Femi Kuti fully stepped out of the shadow of his late father, Fela Kuti. With this record he begins casting his own shadow. Still Afro-beat, it brings in artists like Mos Def and Common to align itself with hip-hop. The musical pace is less frenetic, but the mood remains as intense as it's always been, as one listens to...
Beastie Boys "To the 5 Boroughs"
Beastie Boys
Six years is a long time, about one-and-a-half generations in pop music and a fairly large chunk out of anyone's life, two sentiments that come into play on the Beastie Boys' sixth album, 2004's To the 5 Boroughs. When the Beasties last delivered an album, it was in the summer of 1998 as the Clinton impeachment scandal was heating up, and just...
Data Warehouse Clear Gif