{"id":155,"date":"2026-05-22T12:12:27","date_gmt":"2026-05-22T12:12:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=155"},"modified":"2026-05-22T12:12:27","modified_gmt":"2026-05-22T12:12:27","slug":"summer-culture-preview","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=155","title":{"rendered":"Summer Culture Preview"},"content":{"rendered":"
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You\u2019re reading the Goings On newsletter, a guide to what we\u2019re watching, listening to, and doing. Sign up to receive it in your in-box.<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

In the summer,<\/strong> New York City likes to play outside\u2014quite literally\u2014as with the genre-skipping, star-packed music festival Governors Ball; Lincoln Center\u2019s congenial \u201cSummer for the City\u201d dance programming on the plaza; the Public Theatre\u2019s always electrifying, free Shakespeare in the Park; and the New York Philharmonic\u2019s blissfully cultivated borough-hopping parks tour (complete with post-show fireworks), among many, many other outdoor performances. If you prefer a dark room with air-conditioning, there are revamps of classics from various eras on the small and big screens\u2014including, streaming, \u201cLittle House on the Prairie,\u201d \u201cCape Fear,\u201d and \u201cLegally Blonde,\u201d and, at the cinema, tales of Odysseus (Christopher Nolan\u2019s \u201cThe Odyssey\u201d) and Robin Hood (Hugh Jackman carries the quiver). Blockbusters abound, among a murderers\u2019 row of musical icons, at the Guggenheim\u2019s Pop-art show, and in a movie that sees Steven Spielberg dabbling, once again, in aliens. But there\u2019s also plenty that is new and unusual: John Early in drag as an addled chef-influencer, in the indie flick \u201cMaddie\u2019s Secret\u201d; Clubbed Thumb\u2019s edifying Summerworks series; the Morgan Library\u2019s meditation on the history and mysteries of tarot. Have a spritz, catch some rays, and, most definitely, see a show. Enjoy our summer culture preview, and start making plans.\u2014Shauna Lyon<\/em><\/p>\n

Read more \u201cI Love Boosters,\u201d Reviewed: A Socialist-Surrealist Shoplifting Fantasy<\/a><\/p>\n

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Jump to: Television<\/strong> | Art<\/strong> | Movies<\/strong> | The Theatre<\/strong> | Dance<\/strong> | Contemporary Music<\/strong> | Classical Music<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Television<\/h2>\n

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Elle Woods, Barack and Larry<\/strong><\/div>\n

Hollywood\u2019s current book-adaptation mania is turning the proverbial beach read into the beach watch this summer. Many boast fresh premises, foremost among them the Peacock drama \u201cThe Five-Star Weekend\u201d<\/strong> (premi\u00e8ring on July 9). Based on Elin Hilderbrand\u2019s Nantucket-set novel, the series follows a food influencer, played by Jennifer Garner, who copes with the sudden death of her husband by bringing together friends from different stages of her life\u2014played by the likes of Chlo\u00eb Sevigny and Regina Hall. Across the Atlantic, a schoolteacher in the London suburbs (Rebecca Hall) is tormented by a debilitating hum in Starz\u2019s \u201cThe Listeners\u201d<\/strong> (June 12). The show, which Jordan Tannahill adapts from his own best-seller, finds its protagonist searching for others unable to escape the mysterious and unrelenting noise.<\/p>\n

A more visceral danger arrives in the form of a vengeance-obsessed Javier Bardem in Apple TV\u2019s \u201cCape Fear\u201d<\/strong> miniseries (June 5), which is inspired by John D. MacDonald\u2019s novel \u201cThe Executioners\u201d and its two big-screen adaptations. Bardem will play the role made famous by Robert De Niro in Martin Scorsese\u2019s 1991 film\u2014that of a violent parolee determined to get revenge on the married lawyers who represented him at his trial, now played by Amy Adams and Patrick Wilson. The streaming site will also see the d\u00e9but of \u201cLucky\u201d<\/strong> (July 15), starring Anya Taylor-Joy as a con woman wanted by both the F.B.I. and an organized-crime boss, in an action thriller based on Marissa Stapley\u2019s novel.<\/p>\n

Next month brings us America\u2019s two-hundred-and-fiftieth birthday\u2014an occasion that Barack Obama apparently intends to celebrate through a collaboration with Larry David. The unlikely pair are the faces of \u201cLife, Larry, and the Pursuit of Unhappiness\u201d<\/strong> (June 26), an HBO sketch show that revisits moments in American history through David\u2019s jaundiced, hapless lens. (In one skit, an attempt to kiss a nurse in the midst of V-J Day celebrations quickly gets David\u2019s character labelled a \u201cpervo.\u201d) A more earnest look at the country\u2019s past will be on offer in a new \u201cLittle House on the Prairie\u201d<\/strong> series on Netflix (July 9), based on Laura Ingalls Wilder\u2019s semi-autobiographical books. Its community-mindedness is sure to rival that of Apple TV\u2019s \u201cTed Lasso\u201d<\/strong> (Aug. 5), whose fourth season features good-guy Ted coaching a women\u2019s soccer team, and introducing his London friends to the delights of Kansas City barbecue.<\/p>\n

While much of the country will celebrate in red, white, and blue, \u201cLegally Blonde\u201d\u00a0\u2019s Elle Woods will spend this summer in her signature pink. The character, played by Reese Witherspoon in the 2001 movie, gets a prequel with Prime Video\u2019s \u201cElle\u201d<\/strong> (July 1), which takes its protagonist (Lexi Minetree) from sun-kissed Bel Air to rain-soaked Seattle. If she\u2019s anything like her future self, teen-age Elle is sure to be guided by an unerring sense of truth and justice while maintaining her irrepressible girliness. What, like it\u2019s hard?\u2014Inkoo Kang<\/em><\/p>\n

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Art<\/h2>\n

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Pop Art, Tarot History, Pope.L<\/strong><\/div>\n

For the most part, the art world doesn\u2019t do summer blockbusters. This season, though, a few of New York\u2019s museums are mounting decidedly fun shows that could be big hits. Chief among them is the Morgan Library & Museum\u2019s \u201cTarot! Renaissance Symbols, Modern Visions\u201d<\/strong> (opening June 26), an exhibition that perfectly bridges the institution\u2019s scholarly approach with mass appeal. The first section of the show looks at the cards\u2019 origins in Renaissance Italy, focussing on an original, hand-painted deck from the fifteenth century, when tarot was still a court game. The second part centers on tarot as a tool of divination and creative inspiration, beginning with the iconic 1909 Rider-Waite-Smith deck and moving on to art works from the twentieth century into the present day.<\/p>\n

The Guggenheim Museum\u2019s summer crowd-pleaser is less subtle. \u201cGuggenheim Pop: 1960 to Now\u201d<\/strong> (June 5) surveys Pop art through the lens of the institution, from landmark early exhibitions to recent acquisitions (including questionable ones, such as Maurizio Cattelan\u2019s infamous banana duct-taped to the wall). It\u2019s hard to tell what will provide the most photogenic moment: posing with Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen\u2019s massive soft sculpture of a shuttlecock or snapping selfies in a Yayoi Kusama infinity room. Either way, expect to wait.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the International Center of Photography continues the recent fashion-forward streak among the city\u2019s museums. \u201cYves Saint Laurent and Photography\u201d<\/strong> (June 11) traces the trajectory of the designer, and of his brand more broadly, through some three hundred fashion photographs, ad campaigns, personal snapshots, and more. The exhibition, a collaboration with Paris\u2019s Mus\u00e9e Yves Saint Laurent and Fondation Pierre Berg\u00e9\u2013Yves Saint Laurent, makes the case that part of the French pioneer\u2019s expertise included understanding the value of a good picture.<\/p>\n

This summer also brings deep dives into more niche, yet still fascinating, subjects. At the Museum of Modern Art, \u201cArchitects of Liberation: Modernism in Western Africa\u201d<\/strong> (July 5) examines how political independence helped shape the built environment in seven countries, from Nigeria to Senegal, between the nineteen-fifties and eighties. The show, the result of four years of research, includes roughly four hundred and fifty objects, spotlighting architects and projects that have received little international attention. It should be eye-opening.<\/p>\n

The Jewish Museum also revisits a chapter of history with \u201cModernity and Opulence: Women of the Wiener Werkst\u00e4tte\u201d<\/strong> (July 17). The Viennese collective and workshop, which merged high aesthetics with functional design, was founded, in 1903, by three men; however, women made up a substantial proportion of its artisans and clients\u2014particularly, it seems, Jewish women. This exhibition aims to tell their story through paintings, ceramics, textiles, films, and more.<\/p>\n

Among the other shows of the season, it\u2019s worth noting two: \u201cAkinsanya Kambon: Soul Sessions\u201d<\/strong> (May 28), a doubleheader at SculptureCenter and the Center for Art, Research and Alliances, which introduces New Yorkers to the spiritual ceramics of a former marine and Black Panther; and the Drawing Center\u2019s \u201cCertainly an Act: Works on Paper by Pope.L\u201d<\/strong> (June 26), a focussed look at lesser-known work by the unclassifiable contemporary artist, who died three years ago.<\/p>\n

But perhaps the most art-world thing you can do in New York in the summertime is to flee the city for greener pastures. If you\u2019re plotting a getaway, why not time it for Upstate Art Weekend,<\/strong> June 25-29? The bonanza of exhibitions and events happening everywhere from museums to barns in the Hudson Valley and the Catskills seems to grow larger and more delightfully unwieldy every year.\u2014Jillian Steinhauer<\/em><\/p>\n

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Movies<\/h2>\n

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Odysseus, Aliens, Spider-Man<\/strong><\/div>\n

Studios and independent producers alike are planning hot fun in the summertime. Olivia Wilde directed \u201cThe Invite\u201d<\/strong> (June 26), an erotic comedy, in which she and Seth Rogen play a San Francisco couple whose swinger neighbors (Pen\u00e9lope Cruz and Edward Norton) proposition them. \u201cGail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass\u201d<\/strong> (July 10), directed by David Wain, stars Zoey Deutch as a Midwestern hairdresser who, enraged when her fianc\u00e9 (Michael Cassidy) hooks up with Jennifer Aniston, heads to Los Angeles to pair off with Jon Hamm. In Gregg Araki\u2019s \u201cI Want Your Sex\u201d<\/strong> (July 31), Cooper Hoffman plays an art-studio assistant, Elliot, in a B.D.S.M. relationship with his boss (Olivia Wilde); Charli XCX plays Elliot\u2019s girlfriend. Monica Barbaro and Callum Turner star in Will Gluck\u2019s dystopian comedy \u201cOne Night Only\u201d<\/strong> (Aug. 7), set in a time in which premarital sex is legal for a single night a year.<\/p>\n

Action films, whether fantasies or plausible realities, are seasonal mainstays, as in \u201cDisclosure Day\u201d<\/strong> (June 12), Steven Spielberg\u2019s science-fiction drama about contact with extraterrestrials, with Emily Blunt as a TV newscaster and Josh O\u2019Connor as a cybersecurity expert. The disaster-film comedy \u201cStop! That! Train!\u201d<\/strong> (June 12) features performers from the \u201cDrag Race\u201d series, including Ginger Minj and Jujubee, as stewardesses on a high-speed rail line, and RuPaul, as the President; Adam Shankman directed. In \u201cUnidentified\u201d<\/strong> (June 19), directed by Haifaa Al Mansour, a Saudi woman (Mila Al Zahrani) who\u2019s obsessed with a true-crime podcast gets a clerical job at a police station and winds up investigating a murder. \u201cHer Private Hell\u201d<\/strong> (July 24), directed by Nicolas Winding Refn, blends science fiction and melodrama, as a mysterious substance penetrates the atmosphere amid an American soldier\u2019s search for his daughter; Charles Melton and Sophie Thatcher star. Andrew Patterson\u2019s crime drama \u201cThe Rivals of Amziah King\u201d<\/strong> (Aug. 14) stars Matthew McConaughey as an Oklahoma beekeeper who reconnects with his former foster daughter (Angelina LookingGlass) and gets ensnared in a criminal scheme involving the honey trade.<\/p>\n

Classic and modern mythology come in for big-screen workouts, starting with Michael Sarnoski\u2019s \u201cThe Death of Robin Hood\u201d<\/strong> (June 19), in which the bow-and-arrow-wielding wealth redistributor (played by Hugh Jackman), wounded and vulnerable, looks back with regret at his violent past. In \u201cSupergirl\u201d<\/strong> (June 26), directed by Craig Gillespie, Milly Alcock plays the titular heroine, who helps a friend (Eve Ridley) avenge the killing of her father; David Corenswet returns as Superman. Christopher Nolan\u2019s version of \u201cThe Odyssey\u201d<\/strong> (July 17) stars Matt Damon as Odysseus, whose homecoming to his wife, Penelope (Anne Hathaway), is impeded by battles with human and superhuman opponents. Tom Holland plays their son, Telemachus; Lupita Nyong\u2019o plays Helen of Troy. In \u201cSpider-Man: Brand New Day\u201d<\/strong> (July 31), directed by Destin Daniel Cretton, the webmaster (Tom Holland) comes out of retirement to combat mysterious criminals in New York; Zendaya, Sadie Sink, and Jacob Batalon co-star.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Summer offers no vacation from creative people\u2019s struggles. John Carney\u2019s \u201cPower Ballad\u201d<\/strong> (May 29) features Paul Rudd as a wedding singer in Ireland who seeks amends after a former boy-band star (Nick Jonas) steals a song that he wrote. John Early wrote and directed \u201cMaddie\u2019s Secret\u201d<\/strong> (June 12) and also stars\u2014in drag\u2014as an aspiring chef whose sudden fame as a food influencer is threatened by her struggle with bulimia. Angelina Jolie stars in Alice Winocour\u2019s \u201cCouture\u201d<\/strong> (June 26), as a director who, while making a film about Paris Fashion Week, is diagnosed with breast cancer. Jane Schoenbrun\u2019s movie-centric horror drama \u201cTeenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma\u201d<\/strong> (Aug. 7) stars Hannah Einbinder, as a filmmaker hired to reboot a long-running slasher franchise, and Gillian Anderson, as an actress from the franchise\u2019s first installment.\u2014Richard Brody<\/em><\/p>\n

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The Theatre<\/h2>\n

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Cramped Quarters, Ancient Poisoners<\/strong><\/div>\n

This season\u2019s playwrights seem fascinated by the idea of close encounters: couples stranded in deserts, churches, tents, and other pressure cookers. \u201cJerome\u201d<\/strong> (Playwrights Horizons; in previews, opening June 2) features a gay couple in the early nineties, living in the Arizona hinterlands, where the arrival of another man unsettles the pair\u2019s equilibrium. The play, by John J. Caswell, Jr., presents polyamory as an emotional bomb shelter, built hurriedly against the catastrophe of the AIDS<\/em> epidemic. Another kind of hospitality is on offer in \u201cThe Loved Ones\u201d<\/strong> (Irish Rep; June 13). Erica Murray\u2019s work, which premi\u00e8red in Dublin, in 2023, follows Nell, the host of an Airbnb in rural Ireland, as she receives two strangers into her home\u2014one of whom is a compromisingly friendly American\u2014and reckons with the death of her adult son. At Atlantic Theatre Company, Bubba Weiler\u2019s \u201cThe Saviors\u201d<\/strong> (July 8) follows two altar boys whose friendship buckles under the combined tensions of faith, masculinity, and adolescence. In \u201cCamping\u201d<\/strong> (HERE<\/em>; June 13), Victoria Lynne Barclay traps two best friends inside a tent brewing with secrets, longing, and petrichor-tinged memories. Levi Holloway\u2019s \u201cParanormal Activity: A New Story Live on Broadway\u201d<\/strong> (August Wilson; Aug. 14) brings the frightening premise of the film franchise\u2014that it\u2019s people, rather than places, that are haunted\u2014to the stage.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Revamps and reduxes are under way at Lincoln Center Theatre and New York City Center. The \u201cEncores!\u201d series at the latter presents \u201cLa Cage aux Folles\u201d<\/strong> (June 17-28), featuring an all-Black cast led by Billy Porter and directed by Robert O\u2019Hara. The French Riviera-set show outstretches a hand-lettered invitation to both drag devotees and night-club romantics. Julia May Jonas\u2019s \u201cA Woman Among Women\u201d<\/strong> (Claire Tow; in previews, opening June 4), which premi\u00e8red at Bushwick Starr two years ago and is being mounted at LCT3, retools Arthur Miller\u2019s \u201cAll My Sons,\u201d relocating its story from postwar Ohio to a present-day back yard in Northampton, Mass. \u201cThe Whoopi Monologues\u201d<\/strong> (Newhouse; July 7) revisits Whoopi Goldberg\u2019s landmark one-woman show by splitting its psychological striptease across five performers, including Kara Young and Kerry Washington, both endlessly watchable.<\/p>\n

Read more Why Is It So Hard to Be Ordinary?<\/a><\/p>\n

Clubbed Thumb\u2019s Summerworks programs, playing through the end of June, offer yet more anxiety-inducing choices, including a show about ordinary Americans who are burdened with magical powers (Jesse Jae Hoon\u2019s \u201cTitans\u201d<\/strong>), two female friends having a life-changing dinner (Nadja Leonhard-Hooper\u2019s \u201cDerangements\u201d<\/strong>), and the death of a beloved pet (Bailey Williams\u2019s \u201cThe Family Dog<\/strong>\u201d).<\/p>\n

Questions of inheritance hover over Jonathan Spector\u2019s \u201cBirthright\u201d<\/strong> (MCC Theatre; June 5), which follows six friends from a 2006 trip to Israel through eighteen years of shifting allegiances and digitally sustained intimacy. C\u00e9sar Alvarez\u2019s \u201cThe Potluck\u201d<\/strong> (Soho Rep; June 30) turns the Greensboro massacre into a hauntological musical about labor, memory, and surviving a slaughter you didn\u2019t personally witness.<\/p>\n

The city\u2019s directors have apparently decided that if crowns are going to be fought over, audiences might as well sweat a little, too. The Public Theatre mounts \u201cHenry VI\u201d<\/strong> (June 9) in two three-hour installments of dynastic collapse, featuring an Asian cast. Shakespeare in the Park reopens the Delacorte with \u201cRomeo & Juliet\u201d<\/strong> (in previews; opening June 11), letting Verona\u2019s most impulsive teen-agers fall in love in the mosquitoed Central Park air.<\/p>\n

And for patrons craving more venom with their summer spritz, Perelman Performing Arts Center unveils \u201cGiulia: The Poison Queen of Palermo\u201d<\/strong> (June 28), directed by Mary Zimmerman and starring the writer, Jennifer Nettles, as the seventeenth-century poisoner whose discreet concoctions allegedly dispatched hundreds of abusive husbands across Italy. Rotten spouses may prove this season\u2019s least mourned casualties.\u2014Rhoda Feng<\/em><\/p>\n

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Dance<\/h2>\n

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Ballet Stars, Dance Parties<\/strong><\/div>\n

In summertime, the city develops a new personality: open, relaxed, even, at times, outdoorsy. Each year, the plaza at Lincoln Center goes through a vernal transformation, its formal granite parterre converted to a busy dance floor with twinkling lights, part of the center\u2019s Summer for the City<\/strong> programming. Free nightly dance parties happen there from June 10 to Aug. 8 (often with headphones, so as not to disturb performances at the nearby theatres). This summer, the Center introduces a new Contemporary Dance Festival<\/strong> (Alice Tully Hall; June 18-July 5), curated by the savvy, stylish Kyle Abraham. Its offerings include a recent work by the Bengali British choreographer Akram Khan, inspired by ancient myth, and a meditation on the African influences on Flamenco, by the Ghanaian Jamaican British choreographer Yinka Esi Graves.<\/p>\n

Just beyond the dance floor, American Ballet Theatre<\/strong> takes up residence at the Metropolitan Opera House with a quartet of big, evening-length, narrative works (June 17-July 18), to the delight of lovers of old-school ballets, the kind that include colorful sets and Romantic plotlines: \u201cDon Quixote,\u201d \u201cOnegin,\u201d \u201cSwan Lake,\u201d and the endlessly charming \u201cSylvia.\u201d (Watch, in particular, for casts that include Chloe Misseldine, Catherine Hurlin, and Daniel Camargo.) On July 6, the former Bolshoi phenom Natalia Osipova,<\/strong> who made her name in the early two-thousands with her stratospheric ballon<\/em> (jumping capacity), returns for her first appearance with the company since 2018, in \u201cDon Q.\u201d<\/p>\n

Osipova is not the only star paying New York a call: the Apollo-esque Hugo Marchand,<\/strong> \u00e9toile<\/em> of the Paris Op\u00e9ra Ballet, has organized an evening of dances at New York City Center (July 23-26). The selections will include Maurice B\u00e9jart\u2019s lusty \u201cBol\u00e9ro,\u201d from 1961, in which a soloist (Marchand) undulates seductively on a table to Ravel, like a snake charmer weaving a spell. Better yet, he\u2019s bringing a few of his Op\u00e9ra-\u00e9toile<\/em> friends, including L\u00e9onore Baulac and Germain Louvet, who will dance George Balanchine\u2019s \u201cSonatine,\u201d a pas de deux as breezy as a stroll on the Champs-\u00c9lys\u00e9es.<\/p>\n

Mark Morris,<\/strong> for his company\u2019s two-week residence at the Joyce Theatre (July 14-25), has chosen a trio of programs set to Americana\u2014a personal specialty. The first is mostly made up of popular tunes (also with a new piece, \u201cPizzica,\u201d set to the Italian-ish music that Balanchine used for his high-spirited \u201cTarantella\u201d). The second focusses on country-and-Western songs. But it is the third that contains one of Morris\u2019s most striking dances, the weird, ritualistic \u201cGrand Duo,\u201d to stirring music by the Portland-born Lou Harrison.\u2014Marina Harss<\/em><\/p>\n

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Contemporary Music<\/h2>\n

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Guitar Gods, Rock and Pop Idols<\/strong><\/div>\n

Listen closely and summer\u2019s approach can be heard in the distance as the roar of the crowds at the 2026 edition of Flushing\u2019s Governors Ball Music Festival<\/strong> grows near. Headliners Lorde, Kali Uchis,<\/strong> and Jennie,<\/strong> of the K-pop girl group Blackpink, are joined by such artists as Wet Leg, Blood Orange, King Princess, 2hollis, Geese,<\/strong> and Slayyyter<\/strong> (June 5-7). The night before the Vegas rapper Baby Keem<\/strong> takes his top-billed Friday-night slot at the fest, he builds a pop-up casino at Brooklyn Paramount (June 4).<\/p>\n

A handful of the best guitarists in the world convene in the city. At Sony Hall, as part of the Blue Note Jazz Festival, Mdou Moctar<\/strong> unleashes riffy jams inspired by assouf<\/em>, a fusionist Tuareg guitar music (June 7). The 2025 Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Jack White<\/strong> shows off the skill that earned him his enshrinement, at Brooklyn Paramount (July 11-12). And, at Lincoln Center, St. Vincent<\/strong> sets down her axe to play with the New York Philharmonic, her music arranged for accompaniment by Jules Buckley (July 2).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Though a genre-fluid affair, the Blue Note fest also features some of the most adventurous pacesetters in modern jazz, among them the flautist Shabaka,<\/strong> the London septet Kokoroko,<\/strong> the trumpeter Chief Adjuah,<\/strong> and the harpist Brandee Younger.<\/strong> Younger also has a co-billed show with Ravi Coltrane<\/strong> at Nubeluz on June 8, with special guest Samara Joy,<\/strong> after which Coltrane will set up at Birdland for his own residency (June 16-20). Principally, the season hosts the most daring saxophonist of the past decade, the cosmic visionary Kamasi Washington<\/strong> (Music Hall of Williamsburg; July 29-30).<\/p>\n

The stirring power of soul is alive in a few cross-generational musicians carrying on the legacy in distinct ways. On June 3, Alex Isley,<\/strong> a scion of the Isley Brothers group, lights up Irving Plaza with her warm, glowing sound. On June 25, Son Little<\/strong> brings a rootsier approach and the blues of his March record, \u201cCityfolk,\u201d to Music Hall of Williamsburg. Jill Scott,<\/strong> on the heels of her first album in ten years, holds space for spoken-word positivity at Kings Theatre (July 16, 18-19). For electronic music that is just as awe-inducing, there\u2019s the ambient-pop artist Laurel Halo<\/strong> (Pioneer Works; June 25), the eclectic avant-rap producer Flying Lotus,<\/strong> playing with a live band (Blue Note; July 8-9), and the psychedelic composer Dan Deacon<\/strong> (Pioneer Works; July 31).<\/p>\n

Larger crowds gather for idols from various spheres of influence. At Forest Hills Stadium, catch the indie-rock outfit Wilco<\/strong> (June 20) and the folk-rock laureate Bob Dylan<\/strong> (July 21). The arenas play host to child stars turned pop girlies (Ariana Grande<\/strong> at Barclays Center; July 12-13, 16, and 18-19, and Hilary Duff<\/strong> at Madison Square Garden; Aug. 5-6) in addition to trailblazers in Spanish-language pop (Rosal\u00eda<\/strong> at M.S.G.; June 16-17, and Shakira<\/strong> at Barclays Center; July 20-21). The summer goes full bore when one of the rap GOAT<\/em>s, Jay-Z,<\/strong> takes over Yankee Stadium (July 10-12) to celebrate the anniversaries of two home-town classics\u2014\u201cReasonable Doubt\u201d and \u201cThe Blueprint.\u201d\u2014Sheldon Pearce<\/em><\/p>\n

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Classical Music<\/h2>\n

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Summer Festivals, Beautiful America<\/strong><\/div>\n

If you need a break from un-air-conditioned subway platforms this summer, there\u2019s a multitude of classical events to stop by. The contemporary Time:Spans Festival<\/strong> kicks off, on Aug. 8, with the New York premi\u00e8re of Wolfgang Rihm\u2019s \u201cJagden und Formen,\u201d an orchestral piece that begins with hand claps\u2014listen up! The series also includes a world premi\u00e8re by Suzanne Farrin, honoring the Hungarian composer Gy\u00f6rgy Kurt\u00e1g (Aug. 10); the International Contemporary Ensemble,<\/strong> performing \u201cI did not paint the war. I lived the war,\u201d by the Iranian composer Farzia Fallah (Aug. 17); and the Grammy-winning chamber group Alarm Will Sound,<\/strong> with Georg Friedrich Haas\u2019s \u201cin vain,\u201d hopefully not in vain (Aug. 21).<\/p>\n

Lincoln Center holds its third annual Festival Orchestra,<\/strong> the successor of the Mostly Mozart Festival. Jonathon Heyward,<\/strong> the director, will once again lead us in a \u201cSymphony of Choice,\u201d where the audience can vote for pieces on their phones (July 8). \u201cA Mother\u2019s Love\u201d (July 31, Aug.\u00a01) features Brahms\u2019s \u201cLullaby.\u201d Frau Brahms, for her part, wrote her son dozens of heartfelt letters, including one saying that he was always her \u201cfirst thought\u201d in the morning. (He had two other siblings. A mother\u2019s love!)<\/p>\n

The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center\u2019s<\/strong> \u201cSummer Evenings\u201d series returns to Alice Tully Hall, with performances that include Gershwin\u2019s Three Preludes for Violin and Piano (July 11), Bernstein\u2019s Meditations for Cello and Piano, from \u201cMass\u201d (July 14), and Beethoven\u2019s Quintet Op. 29 (July 18). At the Rose Theatre, Teatro Nuovo<\/strong> will put on Mozart\u2019s beloved \u201cDon Giovanni\u201d (July 15) and Rossini\u2019s less-loved \u201cIl Turco in Italia\u201d (July 16). Strauss\u2019s \u201cThe Egyptian Helen,\u201d set after the Trojan War, will make an appearance at Bard Summerscape<\/strong> (Fisher Center, Annandale-on-Hudson; July 24-Aug. 2)\u2014move over, Christopher Nolan\u2019s \u201cOdyssey.\u201d<\/p>\n

In Brooklyn, on June 3, National Sawdust honors Felipe Lara,<\/strong> the Brazilian American composer and, as of 2024, Pulitzer finalist. Lara\u2019s special interest in mosaics and mazes will be reflected in his winding, labyrinthine piece called, neatly enough, \u201cMosaic Maze.\u201d At Green-Wood Cemetery, Death of Classical<\/strong> digs into what it means to celebrate the country\u2019s two-hundred-and-fiftieth birthday. Its program spotlights compositions that reinvent the song \u201cAmerica the Beautiful,\u201d performed by the pianist Min Kwon (June 18-20); tickets include a walking tour of the catacombs. Also embracing the outdoors, the New York Philharmonic<\/strong> goes borough to borough for its \u201cConcerts in the Park\u201d series. Otherwise, this summer promises music from A.C. to shining A.C.\u2014Jane Bua<\/em><\/p>\n

Read more How Good Is This World Cup Squad, Really?<\/a><\/p>\n

P.S. Good stuff on the internet:<\/strong><\/p>\n