New York, NY (Top40 Charts) St. Ann's Warehouse, WNYC, And Brooklyn Bridge Park Present Rhapsody For This Land: The American Odyssey In Music, A Free Concert Under The Brooklyn Bridge, Anchored By Lara Downes' Timely New Version Of Gershwin's Rhapsody In Blue, July 27
Marking the Centennials of Both Rhapsody in Blue and WNYC, Concert in Brooklyn Bridge Park Offers a Program of American
Music Reflecting the "Musical Kaleidoscope" of Gershwin's Groundbreaking 1924 Composition
Curated By Downes, Concert Features Rosanne Cash, Christian McBride, Arturo O'Farrill, Time for Three, and Orchestra Elena, Conducted by Aram Demirjian
WNYC to Broadcast Rhapsody For This Land Live on 93.9 FM, AM 820, and www.wnyc.or
St. Ann's Warehouse, WNYC, and Brooklyn Bridge Park present Rhapsody for This Land: The American Odyssey in Music, a free, outdoor concert in celebrating the 100th anniversary of Gershwin's exuberant American anthem Rhapsody in Blue, July 27 at 6pm. Situated beneath the iconic Brooklyn Bridge, in the newly opened Emily Warren Roebling Plaza adjacent to St. Ann's Warehouse, the concert features iconoclastic classical pianist and host of NPR's AMPLIFY Lara Downes, performing the New York City premiere of her take on Gershwin's innovative 1924 work, in a radical new arrangement by the young Puerto Rican composer Edmar Colón. Considering American music through a century of immigration and transformation, Rhapsody for This Land features an array of leading artists in a program spanning genres and generations. WNYC, New York's public radio station, will broadcast the concert live as part of its own Centennial celebration, extending the reach to listeners on-air and online. The large-scale public gathering foreshadows a high-stakes election season. Headcount, a non-partisan organization that channels the power of music to promote participation in democracy, will register voters at the event.
Karen Brooks Hopkins joins St. Ann's and WNYC as executive producer. Major support has been provided by The Robert W. Wilson Charitable Trust.
The concert, curated by Downes, will feature guest artists including four-time Grammy-winning singer-songwriter Rosanne Cash, eight-time Grammy-winning bassist and composer Christian McBride, eight-time Grammy-winning pianist, composer, educator, and Afro Latin Jazz Alliance founder Arturo O'Farrill, and string trio Time for Three, winners of the 2023 Grammy Award for Best Classical Instrumental Solo. Orchestra Elena, a diverse ensemble of young NYC musicians, will be led by conductor Aram Demirjian. The concert will also feature music by Leonard Bernstein, Duke Ellington, Nina Simone, Arturo O'Farrill, and others celebrating the long history of hope, protest, and change as expressed through American music.
Gershwin famously described Rhapsody in Blue—which bridged jazz and classical vocabularies with echoes of music from immigrant communities throughout New York—as a "musical kaleidoscope of America." Downes, "who's carved out an expansive niche by kicking down outdated and nonsensical orthodoxies that long excluded
Black and other marginalized composers from the concert hall canon" (San Francisco Chronicle) collaborated with Puerto Rican composer Colón to reimagine the work in an arrangement that reverberates with the multicultural sounds of
America in our own time. Caribbean instruments and rhythms evoke Downes' and Colón's own lineages, while influences from Central and South America, Asia, the
Middle East and all the corners of the globe emerge into and grow Gershwin's soundscape. Their adventurous collaboration was released on the Pentatone label in February 2024, to national critical acclaim. It will also be featured on Downes' forthcoming new album This Land, to be released in August.
In a discussion about Rhapsody in Blue, which premiered in New York in 1924 three months before the anti-immigration Johnson-Reed Act (which included the Asian Exclusion and
National Origins Acts) passed, Downes told NPR, "I don't hear Rhapsody in Blue anymore as just a piece of entertainment… I think it's a little bit of an act of rebellion, or at the very least, it's a statement about what
America should be and what that sounds like."
In 2022, as the city emerged from the pandemic, St. Ann's Warehouse (in association with
Karen Brooks Hopkins) presented Fandango at the Wall featuring Arturo O'Farrill with his Afro-Latin Jazz Orchestra and a full roster of guest artists. The outdoor concert celebrated the experience of uniting musicians from both sides of the border wall in San Diego. Over 5,000 people from all over Brooklyn and beyond attended the free event, with the Statue of
Liberty aglow as a backdrop and the Brooklyn Bridge towering above. Rhapsody for This Land furthers St. Ann's vision of this only-in-New York experience, and amplifies the musical message that we are all one America.
Headcount volunteers will provide tables where audience members can register to vote as they enter and exit the concert.
Lara Downes says, "It's such a critical time to come together as citizens, and for me, the most solid, fertile common ground we can find is where we meet through American music. This concert is a celebration of the past, the present and the future: bringing Gershwin's Rhapsodyhome to Brooklyn for a joyful centennial salute, exploring what he called the 'musical kaleidoscope of America' with my musician friends who come from so many different backgrounds and traditions, lifting spirits and raising every voice as we rejoice in the melting pot of this extraordinary city. I can't wait to spend a beautiful day together in the park, and to send our music out to hundreds of thousands of listeners across the country and around the world through the magic of live radio."
"I'm thrilled to host this extraordinary concert that honors the Centennial anniversaries of both WNYC and Rhapsody in Blue through performances by such a phenomenal group of artists," said Alison Stewart, Host of WNYC's All of It. "Bringing people together and creating shared experiences has been at the core of WNYC's mission for 100 years. We're thrilled to partner with St. Ann's Warehouse to bring this magical exploration of the American musical tradition to audiences everywhere - in the park, on air, and online."
St. Ann's Warehouse Artistic
Director Susan Feldman says, "To present live music in view of the Bridge is a thrill and a privilege. And even more so co-presenting with Brooklyn Bridge Park, WNYC, and
Karen Brooks Hopkins."
Karen Brooks Hopkins says, "When Lara Downes told me about her concept for a reimagined Rhapsody in Blue that would reflect the diversity of
America today, I knew it had to be played in Brooklyn, the birthplace of its incomparable composer,
George Gershwin. We then joined forces with the amazing team at St Ann's Warehouse and developed the idea into a full concert experience that will be performed in the perfect setting: the iconic Brooklyn Bridge Park. We are deeply grateful to our tremendous group of donors, led by The Robert W. Wilson Charitable Trust, and our partners, WNYC and Headcount, for making this special event a reality for Brooklyn and all of New York City."
Honored as 2022 Classical Woman of the Year by Performance Today, American pianist (and NY Times crossword glue) Lara Downes has been called "a musical ray of hope" by NBC News and "an explorer whose imagination is fired by bringing notice to the underrepresented and forgotten" (The Log Journal). An iconoclast and trailblazer, her dynamic work as a sought-after soloist, a Billboard Chart-topping recording artist, a producer, curator, arts activist, and advocate positions her as a cultural visionary on the national arts scene. Lara's musical roadmap seeks inspiration from the legacies of history, family, and collective memory, excavating a broad landscape of music to create a series of acclaimed performance and recording projects that serve as gathering spaces for her listeners to find common ground and shared experience.
Lara's recent and upcoming onstage adventures include appearances at New York's Lincoln Center, LA's Disney Hall, the Philadelphia Orchestra,
Boston Pops,
Detroit Symphony Orchestra, among many others. She is a highly visible media presence as the creator and host of NPR's Amplify with Lara Downes and the creator and host of the nationally syndicated radio program Classical Americana, produced by KUSC/KDFC Classical California. Lara enjoys creative collaborations with an eclectic range of artists, and her close partnerships with prominent composers span genres and generations. Lara's adventurous approach to concept and curation have created a unique series of acclaimed recordings, including her 2023 release Love at Laston the Pentatone label, which reached #1 on the Billboard Classical Chart and was featured as an NPR Tiny Desk Concert.
Puerto Rican-born Edmar Colón was awarded the prestigious Presidential Scholarship to attend Berklee College of
Music with a dual major in Performance and Classical Composition, as well as a Master's degree in Global Studies at the prestigious Global Jazz Institute. Colón has performed throughout the world, including at the Kennedy Center,
Detroit Jazz Festival, Puerto Rico Heineken Jazz Festival, Toronto Jazz Festival, Panama Jazz Festival, Montreal Jazz Festival, and Monterey Jazz Festival, among others. Recently, he performed at the Abbey Lincoln tribute tour with GRAMMY-award winners Terri Lyne Carrington, Esperanza Spalding, Dianne Reeves, and
Dee Dee Bridgewater. In 2017, he was honored in the annual Patron Saint festivities of his hometown of Coamo, Puerto Rico.
Colón's work as a composer and arranger has included collaborations with Wayne Shorter, Geri Allen,
Esperanza Spalding and Terri Lyne Carrington, as well as commissions from the
National Symphony Orchestra and the world-renowned
Boston POPS.
Karen was an employee of the Brooklyn Academy of
Music ("BAM''), America's oldest performing arts center, for 36 years serving as its President from 1999 until her retirement in 2015 when she was designated President Emerita. As president,
Karen oversaw the institution's 230 full time employees and various theatrical venues ranging from the 250-seat Fishman space to the 2100-seat
Howard Gilman Opera House.
Currently,
Karen is a Board member and Senior Advisor to the Onassis Foundation for the Public Benefit. She also served as the Nasher Haemisegger Fellow at SMU DataArts located at Southern Methodist University in Dallas,
Texas from 2016-2021. She is also a
Director of the
Trust of Governors Island and a Board member of the
Jerome L. Greene Foundation. From 2009-2010, she was selected by the New York
State Assembly to represent Brooklyn on the
State Board of Regents. From 2015- 2017,
Karen served as the inaugural Senior Fellow in Residence at the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Karen was awarded honorary degrees from St. Francis College, Long Island University and Pratt
Institute and, in 2019, she received an honorary Doctorate of Laws from Columbia University. She has also received several international honors including the King Olav Medalfrom Norway, the Chevalier de L'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres from France and the Commander of the Royal Order of the Polar Star from Sweden. During her tenure as President of BAM, the institution was awarded the
National Medal of Arts from President Barack Obama.
In 2013,
Karen was named one of the 50 Most Powerful Women in New York by Crain's New York Business. She was also honored as a member of the first Crain's Hall of Fame in 2015.
Karen is the author of Successful Fundraising for Arts and Culture Organizations, currently in its 2nd edition. In 2021, her memoir of her years at BAM was published by powerHouse Books.
St. Ann's Warehouse plays a vital role on the global cultural landscape as an American artistic home for international companies of distinction, American avant-garde masters, and talented emerging artists ready to work on a grand scale. Located on the waterfront in Brooklyn Bridge Park, the spectacular waterfront theater provides artists with flexible, open space, enabling them to work with unfettered creativity, knowing that the theater can be adapted to suit their needs.
Over its 44-year history, St. Ann's Warehouse has introduced American audiences to landmark works from a global community of theater-makers including the
National Theatre of Scotland (Black Watch, Let the Right One In); Emma Rice (Brief Encounter, Tristan & Yseult); TR Warszawa (Festen, Macbeth); Mark Rylance (Measure for Measure),
Daniel Kramer (Woyzeck), Enda Walsh (The Walworth Farce, and Misterman, Grief Is the Thing with Feathers, both featuring Cillian Murphy); the Donmar Warehouse (the all-female Shakespeare Trilogy);
Daniel Fish's Oklahoma! (2019 Tony Award winner); Good Chance Theatre's The Jungle; and
Little Amal Walks NYC, a massive public art project co-produced by St. Ann's and The Walk Productions; Almeida Theatre's The Hunt (with Tobias Menzies). St. Ann's legacy concerts in St. Ann's Church: Lou Reed's and John Cale's Songs for 'Drella; Lou Reed's Berlin; legendary Hal Willner tribute concerts, and solo outings by Jeff Buckley, Marianne Faithfull,
Aaron Neville,
David Bowie, Joe Strummer, and many others During the pandemic, St. Ann's deployed its roof and façade for free public art exhibitions and outdoor roof concerts.
With an urban vibrancy and a global perspective, WNYC is New York's public radio station, broadcasting and streaming award-winning journalism, groundbreaking audio programming and essential talk radio to the city and beyond. WNYC is a leading member station of NPR and broadcasts programs from the BBC World Service, along with a roster of WNYC-produced local programs that champion the stories and spirit of New York City and the surrounding region. From its state-of-the-art studios, WNYC is reshaping audio for a new generation of listeners, producing some of the most beloved nationally-syndicated public radio programs including Radiolab, On the Media, The New Yorker
Radio Hour, and the local radio show and podcast The Brian Lehrer Show. WNYC broadcasts on 93.9 FM and AM 820 to listeners in New York and the tri-state area, and is available to audiences everywhere at WNYC.org, the WNYC app and through major digital radio services, all made possible through the generous support of our members, donors and sponsors.
The Brooklyn Bridge Park Corporation develops, capitally improves, maintains, and fully operates the Park as a 501 (c) not-for-profit, controlled by the City of New York. Brooklyn Bridge Park, one of the largest and most significant public projects to be built in New York City in a generation, has transformed a once dilapidated industrial waterfront into a vibrant and thriving 85-acre civic landscape. The self-sustaining park was designed by the award-winning firm of Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, Inc. and features expansive lawns, rolling hills, waterfront promenades, innovative playgrounds, a greenway, sports facilities, and the popular Jane's Carousel.
