Patti Smith Returns to Singing Live with Brooklyn Concert

Patti Smith attends a special screening of "Pavarotti" at the iPic Theater in New York on May 28, 2019. (AP)
Patti Smith attends a special screening of "Pavarotti" at the iPic Theater in New York on May 28, 2019. (AP)
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Patti Smith Returns to Singing Live with Brooklyn Concert

Patti Smith attends a special screening of "Pavarotti" at the iPic Theater in New York on May 28, 2019. (AP)
Patti Smith attends a special screening of "Pavarotti" at the iPic Theater in New York on May 28, 2019. (AP)

Patti Smith performed a mini-concert at the Brooklyn Museum on Tuesday to honor photographer Robert Mapplethorpe and add her voice to a series of pop-up events that represent New York City’s first baby steps toward the return of live indoor performances.

Smith performed six songs as well as read poetry and excerpts from her book “Just Kids” in the Beaux-Arts Court at the museum, her voice bouncing off the skylight 60 feet above. It was a concert to also honor museum workers and drew just under 50 people, all socially distanced in widely spaced chairs.

“I’m not nervous, but it’s been so long,” she told the crowd. An hour later, just before donning her mask and walking off after a standing ovation, she added: “Hope to see you soon.”

Dressed in black from her boots to her shirt with her gray hair flowing, Smith and an accompanist, Tony Shanahan, performed “Wing,” “My Blakean Year,” “Grateful” and “Dancing Barefoot,” as well as Tim Hardin’s “How Can We Hang On to a Dream?” and Neil Young’s “Helpless.” She ended the set with her biggest hit, “Because the Night,” written with Bruce Springsteen.

It was one of many city-wide cultural events that are part of NY PopsUp, a new festival running until Labor Day that is overseen by producers Scott Rudin and Jane Rosenthal.

The programming is led by interdisciplinary artist and director Zack Winokur, who said he wants events that are “intimate, provocative, gorgeous, stop us in our tracks and remind us what it is to connect with other people through live performance.”

Winokur noted that NY PopsUp is curated by a council of artists, including jazz musician Jon Batiste, set designer Mimi Lien and playwright Jeremy O. Harris. It hopes to get the arts — a giant motor of the city’s economy and culture — moving again.

“We have to take baby steps in order to make sure that it’s incredibly safe,” he said. “Those constraints afford a kind of intimacy and opportunity that is really getting us back to the basics of what it is to connect with people and to connect with art again.”

The shows are being held in performance spaces — including The Apollo in Harlem, St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn and Broadway’s Music Box theater — that are able to be adapted for social distancing guidelines.

Other artists expected to participate include Hugh Jackman, Chris Rock, Alec Baldwin, Amy Schumer, Many Patinkin, Q-Tip, Sutton Foster, Billy Porter, Idina Menzel, Renée Fleming, Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick.

The Smith concert came on the same day in 1989 that Mapplethorpe died at age 42. It also marked the one-year anniversary of when Smith last performed live, at The Fillmore in San Francisco. She weaved stories about Mapplethorpe and her husband, Fred Smith, with her daughter, Jesse, in attendance. She spoke of the day in 1976 in Detroit that she first locked eyes with her future husband.

Smith, known as the Godmother of Punk, came out of New York in the early 1970s to create a blend of cerebral, raggedly emotional music. On Monday, she read from a selection from “Just Kids” about her life with Mapplethorpe in the borough of Brooklyn, describing a couple with not much money but a killer record collection.



‘All Good Things Must Come to an End’: The Who Will Perform One Last Time in North America

 Pete Townshend poses for photographers during the announcement of "The Who: The Song Is Over, The North American Farewell Tour" on Thursday, May 9, 2025, in London. (AP)
Pete Townshend poses for photographers during the announcement of "The Who: The Song Is Over, The North American Farewell Tour" on Thursday, May 9, 2025, in London. (AP)
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‘All Good Things Must Come to an End’: The Who Will Perform One Last Time in North America

 Pete Townshend poses for photographers during the announcement of "The Who: The Song Is Over, The North American Farewell Tour" on Thursday, May 9, 2025, in London. (AP)
Pete Townshend poses for photographers during the announcement of "The Who: The Song Is Over, The North American Farewell Tour" on Thursday, May 9, 2025, in London. (AP)

British rock band The Who are to say their final goodbye to North America this summer.

Singer Roger Daltrey and guitarist Pete Townshend confirmed Thursday that they will perform hits from six-decade career during "The Song Is Over North America Farewell Tour," named after the band’s 1971 hit.

The band, which by the 1970s had become one of the world’s biggest touring bands, easily filling the largest US stadiums, will play their first gig in Florida on Aug. 16, with further dates in cities including New York, Toronto, Los Angeles and Vancouver, before a final date in Las Vegas on Sept. 28.

"Every musician’s dream in the early '60s was to make it big in the US charts," Daltrey said. "For The Who, that dream came true in 1967 and our lives were changed forever."

The band went from performing club shows to headlining the Woodstock festival in the US and becoming one of the biggest box-office draw in the world. The band were inducted into the Rock n’ Roll Hall Of Fame in 1990.

Daltrey, 81, and Townshend, two years his junior, have been one of rock's most prolific double acts, surviving the deaths of drummer Keith Moon in 1978 and bass guitarist John Entwistle in 2002.

"Today, Roger and I still carry the banner for the late Keith Moon and John Entwistle, and, of course, all of our long-time Who fans," Townshend said. "I must say that although the road has not always been enjoyable for me, it is usually easy: the best job I could ever have had. I keep coming back."

Though Daltrey didn’t write songs, he was able to channel Townsend’s many and complicated moods — defiance and rage, vulnerability and desperation.

Together, they forged some of rock’s most defining sounds: the stuttering, sneering delivery of "My Generation," the anguished cry of "They’re all wasted!" from "Baba O’Reilly," and the all-time scream from "Won’t Get Fooled Again." Two of their albums "Tommy" and "Quadrophenia" were also adapted into successful films in 1975 and 1979, respectively.

Pre-sales will run from May 13 ahead of the general sale beginning May 16.

"Well, all good things must come to an end. It is a poignant time," Townshend said. "For me, playing to American audiences and those in Canada has always been incredible."

Daltrey, who said a throat specialist has told him he should have a "day off" after every gig he performs, and Townshend also revealed there are no plans at the moment for a farewell tour of the UK.

"Let’s see if we survive this one," Daltrey said. "I don’t want to say that there won’t be (a UK farewell tour), but equally I’m not confident in saying there will be."