Results tagged “prospectparkbandshell”

READING: Check out today's interviewee, Peter Yarrow, tonight at Barnes and Noble where he'll be performing and signing the recently published Puff, the Magic Dragon book. C'mon, you know you've always wanted to hear that song live!

MOVIES: With another version of Hairspray hitting the big screen this summer, it seems to be a season of decades past and, of course, hair! Movies With a View brings back the musical tale of Central Park hippies, small town boys headed to Vietnam and the '60s as they show the film Hair tonight.

EVENT: If you haven't taken a trip back to the Summer of Love yet, head over to the Whitney tonight for the exhibit and enjoy their Whitney Live event. DJ Scientific and Dana Leong will be providing the tunes.

We never realized exactly what a force Manu Chao was live until experiencing him ourselves at Sasquatch several weeks ago. The man has the power to move people. To incite hysteria and completely dominate his entire audience. It is something any music fan should experience at least once in their life, because there is really nobody else like him performing today. Earlier this week, He did two nights at the Prospect Park Bandshell to a crowd that more resembled a soccer stadium than a rock concert. There was chanting and singing and air horns and flags, but none of that could beat back the rain, which poured down in buckets towards the end of the second night, drenching the fans and creating a lovely mess. Few would argue that after a hot night of dancing, there could have been no perfect release. Check out some more incredible pics (like the one to the left) over at Brooklyn Vegan.

The NY Sun has a great article about a few of NYC's open performances spaces by critic Francis Morrone. Most people love outdoor venues unconditionally, but the article is thought-provoking in terms of how these spaces should work with their environments. Various bandshells are mentioned, such as Seuffert Bandshell in Queens and the Prospect Park Bandshell in Brooklyn, but one Central Park institution gets a serious dressing-down.

The problem with many of our city's outdoor performance venues is that they've been dumped into inappropriate settings — and have been designed with little or no sensitivity to those settings. A prime example is the Delacorte Theater in Central Park, which is home to "Shakespeare in the Park." Originally, this series was begun by Joseph Papp, not in Central Park, but in East River Park on the Lower East Side. Like Naumburg, the book publisher George T. Delacorte thought he was doing something good for the city he loved when he made a series of benefactions to Central Park: the Delacorte Clock, the Alice in Wonderland sculpture, and the Delacorte Theater. Fine though each of these is individually, none has anything to do with the park. The theater was built in 1962, and was intended to be temporary, but instead was renovated in 1976. It is unfortunately infelicitous in its setting. Who thought that a modern theater could play nice with Vaux's enchanting Belvedere Castle? No one thought about that.The park was viewed as a big empty place just crying to have things like bandshells and theaters dumped in it. That such things are popular cannot be denied. A city, after all, gets what it deserves.

MUSIC: Propect Park. TV on the Radio. Matt Pond PA. Voxtrot. Free. Need we say more? Bring a blanket.

ART OPENING: The Martinez Gallery presents an exhibition that "puts the artists behind the graffiti movement on display, challenging stereotypes about both the form and its practitioners. This collective self-portrait, which includes the work of twelve contemporary graffiti writers, exposes a history that the institutional art world and politicians, ignore and even censor." Featuring CASE 2, COCO 144, GIZ, JA, KEZ 5, LES, NATO, NOXER, RATE, SKUF, TRACY 168 and VFR. - Jason Laning

Prince also played GMA at Bryant Park this morning and will be playing Butter tonight. Details:

In addition to the two great events we mentioned earlier, there are also a number of other worthwhile art happenings going on this week. Plenty in fact to satisfy even the most dedicated fine art junkie.

Well, the Siren Music Festival is over and we have to go back to actually paying for our live music--most of the time. The next week is filled with great shows, and a handfull of them are either free or require a very small donation. Gotta love NYC in the summer!

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