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The Downtown Brooklyn Arts Festival (at 300 Ashland Plaza, corner of Flatbush and Lafayette) is an annual celebration of Downtown Brooklyn’s cultural community and the artists, writers, and performers who inspire the borough’s creative spirit. The Oct 4-6 festival will host free, special programming, including theater, poetry, dance, music, and performance, from some of Brooklyn’s most celebrated cultural organizations. 

Saturday, October 5 is DBAF’s Community Day, offering several hands-on activities with artists and institutions, including Mark Stewart’s Orchestra of Original Instruments, an instrument-building workshop led by guitarist and multi-instrumentalist Mark Stewart (Bang on a Can All-Stars) to create instruments and sound-makers from ordinary materials that will lead into an interactive, group fanfare performance.

At 4:30pm, Asphalt Orchestra, Bang on a Can’s radical street band that brings ambitious processional music to the mobile masses, performs their singular takes on music by the Pixies, Thomas Mapfumo, Charles Mingus, Frank Zappa, and more. 

It’s all FREE!

3-4:30 Mark Stewart’s Orchestra of Original Instruments

4:30 Asphalt Orchestra

Theo Bleckmann Performs Hello Earth! – The Music of Kate Bush

Grammy nominated jazz singer and new music composer Theo Bleckmann takes on the mysterious songbook of British pop icon Kate Bush in a project that goes beyond re-creating her music to further realms of sound and interpretation. Joining him in this venture are long-time collaborator percussionist Ben Wittman, bassist Chris Tarry, and keyboardist Henry Hey, along with special guest, multi-instrumentalist Caleb Burhans on viola, guitar, and laptop. This season’s Bang on a Can performances celebrate the power of artists voices, which resonates with themes in the Museum’s fall exhibitions.

Theo on youtube singing Kate Bush’s Bertie

The Bang on a Can All-Stars and the NDR choir, directed by Ralf Sochaczewsky, perform Julia Wolfe’s Anthracite Fields in the Staatsoper Hannover. This performance is part of the Niedersächsischen Musiktage!

Balún is a self-proclaimed “dreambow” quartet whose members hail from Puerto Rico. Though currently residing in New York City, Island culture remains the cornerstone of their forward-thinking, malleable sound. Balún incorporates Caribbean rhythms, old school dembow, glitchy IDM and dreamy dance pop into tunes that are slick and modern but firmly rooted in the traditional sounds of their homeland. balunonline.com

This performance at the Noguchi Museum is free as part of Free First Friday. 

So much music your head will spin. In a good way, not like the Exorcist.

Tonight, before the big LOUD Weekend, come to The Chalet for a live kareoke beyond your weirdest, wildest dreams. 10PM to Whenever…

As 75 Dollar Bill, plywood crate percussionist Rick Brown and guitarist Che Chen make electric, richly patterned music that can shape shift from joyful dance tunes to slowly changing trance minimalism – an uncategorizable hybrid which draws on early electric blues, the modal traditions of West Africa, India and the Middle East, Sun Ra’s space chords and the minimalist and No Wave histories of their home town. 

For this event the group will present a special set of material conceived with the unique environs of the Noguchi Museum in mind. The event is free with museum admission.

The Young People’s Chorus of New York City (YPC), founded and directed by Francisco J. Núñez, perform a concert that will include songs and poems by Leonard Cohen and others, coinciding with the Jewish Museum exhibition, “Leonard Cohen: A Crack in Everything.” Recognized throughout New York City and internationally as one of the leading and most diverse children’s choirs, YPC is a longtime and frequent collaborator with Bang on a Can, and has forged a unique presence in the city’s music community both as a champion commissioner and performer of new works by today’s leading composers and for its innovative vocal arrangements that consistently cross all musical borders.

Thursday, July 11, 2019 – 7:30pm
The Jewish Museum, New York, NY

Steven Bernstein’s Sexmob performs on the Museum Mile, New York City’s biggest block party! It’s free!
Now celebrating its 20th year, Sexmob (Steven Bernstein – slide trumpet, Briggan Krauss – saxophones, Tony Scherr – bass, Kenny Wollesen – drums) continues to deconstruct familiar pop tunes with subversive impunity. Music by Prince, John Barry, the Grateful Dead, Nirvana, the Rolling Stones, Buffalo Springfield, Paul McCartney, and ABBA is fair game for this band of musical renegades.

More info