Lincoln Center Announces Free Concerts as Part of Summer for the City

Two performances in Damrosch Park will be free of charge, while performances at Alice Tully Hall will use a new Choose-What-You-Pay model

Lincoln Center recently announced a series of concerts that will be presented as part of the Summer for the City festival. These concerts feature the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra (MMFO) as well as a range of exciting soloists.

The festival, which continues until August 14, is making some of its concerts available to public free of charge. In addition, Summer for the City is trialing an exciting new Choose-What-You-Pay model, which will make the concerts accessible to all who are interested in attending.

A list of the concerts, artists, and repertoire on offer is below.

MMFO: Louis Langrée and Conrad Tao | Tuesday, July 19 and Wednesday, July 20 | 7:30 pm | Damrosch Park | FREE OF CHARGE

The Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra performs two free outdoor concerts in Damrosch Park in celebration of the city in Renée and Robert Belfer Music Director Louis Langrée’s 20th year at the helm. Incorporating Music: Not Impossible wearable technology for Deaf and hard-of-hearing audience members, the program opens with the overture to Bologne’s only surviving complete opera, L’Amant anonyme. Pianist Conrad Tao joins for Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 17 and Still’s “Out of the Silence” from his impressionistic Seven Traceries, arranged for piano, flute, and strings. The evening culminates with Tao and the orchestra performing Gershwin’s jazz-tinged Rhapsody in Blue.

MMFO: Xian Zhang and Steven Banks | Friday, July 22 and Saturday, July 23 | 7:30 pm | Alice Tully Hall

Conductor Xian Zhang and saxophonist Steven Banks join the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra for a varied program. The evening opens with Nokuthula Ngwenyama’s captivating Primal Message composed in 2020, for string orchestra, harp, and percussion, as an ode to sharing and communication inspired by the Arecibo message. The first saxophonist to ever appear with the orchestra, Banks will be showcased in Glazunov’s Saxophone Concerto and Ibert’s Concertino da camera, both composed in the 1930s. The program concludes with Beethoven’s Fourth Symphony.

MMFO: Louis Langrée and Augustin Hadelich | Tuesday, July 26 and Wednesday, July 27 | 7:30 pm | Alice Tully Hall

Along with the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra, violinist Augustin Hadelich’s will perform the Violin Concerto in A Major by Bologne, the 18th century polymath and African-French composer. Bookending the concerto are two works by Ravel — his Ma mère l'Oye (Mother Goose) suite and the rhapsodic Tzigane, also played by Hadelich. Mozart’s “Paris” Symphony ends the program, conducted by Louis Langrée.

MMFO: Roderick Cox and Jeanine De Bique | Friday, July 29 and Saturday, July 30 | 7:30 pm | Alice Tully Hall

Conductor Roderick Cox leads the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra, opening with Beethoven’s spirited Coriolan Overture. Trinidadian soprano Jeanine De Bique joins for Barber’s plaintive monologue Knoxville: Summer of 1915 and Mozart arias from Zaide and Don Giovanni. Cox continues with Lyric for Strings, by George Walker, the first African-American to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music, and concludes the program with Copland’s famed Appalachian Spring Suite.

MMFO: Jonathon Heyward and Joshua Bell | Tuesday, August 2 and Wednesday, August 3 | 7:30 pm | Alice Tully Hall

Conductor Jonathon Heyward is joined by violinist Joshua Bell and the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra. The program opens with Carlos Simon’s Fate Now Conquers, written in 2020 and inspired by a journal entry from Beethoven’s notebook, written in 1815. Bell performs Vieuxtemps’ dramatic Violin Concerto No. 5 and the slow and meditative Adoration, written in 1951 by Price, the first Black woman composer to have a piece played by a major American orchestra. The program culminates with Beethoven’s Symphony No. 2.

MMFO: Louis Langrée conducts Mozart's Requiem | Fri, August 5 and Sat, August 6 | 7:30pm | Alice Tully Hall

The Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra concludes its series of concerts with a performance of Mozart’s Requiem in D Minor with The Unsung Collective chorus, and soloists Sunhae Im, Daniela Mack, Matthew Swensen, and Dashon Burton. Mozart’s Symphony No. 40 precedes the seminal work, in this moving program conducted by Louis Langrée.