Prospect Park’s Lena Horne Bandshell will come alive when BRIC Celebrate Brooklyn! kicks off its eagerly anticipated summer festival on June 7.
This year’s programming, announced Wednesday, includes more than 20 free and benefit concerts, dance performances, film screenings and celebrations marking Juneteenth and the 50th anniversary of hip-hop. And for the first time, programs reflect input from an artist-curator: singer, multi-instrumentalist and composer Taja Cheek, more widely known as L’Rain.
As previously announced, Celebrate Brooklyn! will open with a free show featuring blues veteran Taj Mahal, who shares a bill with British singer Corinne Bailey Rae and The Harlem Gospel Travelers. Seattle indie-folk group The Head and the Heart concludes the series on Aug. 24, with Massachusetts-born singer-songwriter Izzy Heltai opening.
Among the other acts set to take the stage over the course of the summer are R&B trailblazers Kelela and Liv.e, English art-rock icon John Cale, R&B crooner JOE, wassoulou diva Oumou Sangaré, indie-pop singer-songwriter Indigo De Souza and a program pairing Pakistani vocalist Ali Sethi with Indian-American singer and rapper Raja Kumari.
Some are household names; others, not yet. Either way, festival executive producer Diane Eber urges New Yorkers to take a chance.
“I think people should know and understand that they should come whether or not they’ve heard of the artist,” Eber said. “This season, maybe more than any I’ve been involved with, has so much depth.” An additional piece of advice: “Come early and see the openers, because every artist that we put on this stage has been so intentional, and connects to the other artists on the stage.”
Taja Cheek, who performs as L’Rain, is Celebrate Brooklyn’s first-ever artist curator.
Tim Mosenfelder/Getty Images
Conversations about goals, execution and bookings for this year’s festival, whose stated theme is “looking to the future while honoring our past,” involved input from…
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