Aretha Franklin, Stevie Wonder, Cyndi Lauper with Li’l Kim, Dave Stewart and French first-lady Carla Bruni-Sarkozy celebrated Nobel laureate Nelson Mandela‘s 91st birthday July 18 at a heavily reported Radio City Music Hall concert, but in Prospect Park Nigeria’s King Sunny Adé headlined a free five-act, seven-hour pan-African Celebrate Brooklyn! show drawing some 20,000 people. No reviews have been forthcoming, but hey, it was pretty nice, so you should know.
In lieu of JVC Jazz festivals
Did you miss the “festivity” of June jazz concerts in major Manhattan venues — or did you find ways of coping without them? There’s so much fine music — jazz and beyond — in nearby festive settings, many of them out-of-doors, that the absence of a 38-year-old institution doesn’t seem to have made much stir. Perhaps you didn’t even notice?Â
Here’s my most recent City Arts – NYC report on how George Wein responded to his perennial presence in New York City’s jazz summer being suspended, upcoming classic jazz alternatives in Kent, CT, Katonah NY and Tanglewood, MA — plus notes on promising “world music” events coming up free in Central Park, Battery Park, Prospect Park and the late August Charlie Parker fest, uptown and downtown.