2024 Music

Presented with the West Village BID the festival’s traditional opening block party takes place this year on West 4th Street, “New York’s Left Bank,” centered around the historic Music Inn, a Village fixture for more than half a century, and a hangout for the many musicians who played down the street at Gerdes Folk City and the Bottom Line.

“We have public libraries. Why not public theaters?” said Joseph Papp, facing down Robert Moses, New York City’s infamous “power broker,” when the New York Theater Workshop was just two years old. This year marks the 70th birthday of what became Shakespeare in the Park, which we celebrate with David Amram who, from 1956 to 1967, composed the music for 25 of its productions. Gail Merrifield Papp, Joe’s widow and theatrical partner for 25 years, will be among the friends joining him for this unique evening. 

Sidewalk and pigeon, you look like a city, but you feel like religion to me – Laura Nyro, in her album New York Tendaberry

Laura Nyro was “the very essence of New York City in the most passionate, romantic, and ethereal sense,” said Bette Midler, inducting Nyro into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. At the historic Bitter End, to which Nyro was no stranger, Diane Garisto and the Stoned Soul Picnic band celebrate her remarkable legacy.

The music of Edward Kennedy Ellington and William Thomas Strayhorn has long been a staple of both the Great American Songbook and the jazz lexicon. This program of lovingly curated music contains some cherished classics, such as “Mood Indigo,” “Prelude to A Kiss,” and “Take The ‘A’ Train,” but also delves into some of the "deeper cuts" like “Star-Crossed Lovers,” “Absinthe (Lament for An Orchid),” and “Johnny Come Lately.”

“Those early days in the Village were great,” Bob Dylan told his biographer Robert Shelton around 1970, shortly after he had moved into his townhouse on MacDougal Street, trying to recreate the magic of the early 1960s, when there was “music in the cafes at night and revolution in the air.”

Our memorial concert honors Dan Milner and Mick Moloney--performers, professors, and impresarios who brought great Irish music to settings as varied as the Eagle Tavern on West 14th Street and classrooms at New York University. Performers include Bonnie Milner, Daniel Neely, their friends, and members of the Washington Square Harp and Shamrock Orchestra.

Get into a 1960s groove as Peoples' Voice Café takes you back to the era of subterranean Greenwich Village coffee houses. No microphones, no amps, no speakers and of course no live-streaming. Just acoustic instruments and natural voices with chairs arranged in a circle and the lights low. Home-made music as it was and still can be.