Every summer, Bryant Park turns its lawn into one of New York City’s most democratic stages — free, open to all, and reliably world-class. The 2026 season of Bryant Park Picnic Performances presented by Bank of America runs May 28 through September 11, and the opening weeks already deliver some of the city’s most compelling Latin and African Diaspora programming.
Spread a blanket, pack a picnic, and plan your evenings around these.
Bryant Park Picnic Performances
Live dance, music, theater
Bryant Park Lawn
Midtown South
May 28 – September 11, 2026
FREE
Latin Artists in Bryant Park Picnic Performances 2026
El Laberinto del Coco
Puerto Rican alternative bomba fusion from San Juan
Led by Héctor “Coco” Barez, Calle 13’s former percussionist
Fri, July 31, 2026 | 7pm
FREE
Puerto Rican percussionist Hector “Coco” Barez founded El Laberinto del Coco in 2017, and the Afro-Puerto Rican bomba fusion band has spent the years since pushing traditional bomba into new territory, folding in jazz, funk, and reggae without losing the barril and cuá at its core.
The group’s résumé stretches from Lincoln Center’s globalFEST to the Kennedy Center Millennium Stage to an NPR Tiny Desk concert, and their free Friday-night stop at Bryant Park brings that same genre-crossing energy to Midtown. Between the syncopated horn lines, funky guitar licks, and layered percussion, this is bomba built for a crowd that wants to move, and Bryant Park’s lawn is the perfect place to feel it.
When you hear the call of the drum, it means we are coming together in peace to tell ancestral stories, drum, sing, dance, and if you’re lucky, maybe something more. We have no idea how bomba survived 500 years in secret at home because you can hear the bomba barril a mile away, especially on the island. But it did.
Rafael Cortijo and Ismael Rivera were the bridge that mixed Puerto Rican bomba and plena into Son Cubano to create what we today call salsa. Barez is bringing bomba out into the world again in new fusions for this generation.
There will be bomba dancing so bring your skirt or scarf. The women’s dancing is iconic, but the men’s dance is just as interesting. Like Cuban rumba columbia, the dancer plays the lead drummer. Watch them connect.
You will hear some powerful musical fusions, but our favorite El Laberinto is straight ahead traditional bomba. “Plere Maria, plere…”
The Unsung Collective
African American chamber orchestra | Fri, June 19 | 7-8:15pm
On Juneteenth, the Unsung Collective — a nonprofit devoted to celebrating people of color in Western art music — brings the compositions of African American composer and violinist Jessie Montgomery to the Bryant Park lawn. Starburst, her exhilarating string showpiece, opens the program. Montgomery’s Five Freedom Songs, performed with soprano soloist Olanna Goudeau, follows alongside H. Leslie Adams’s Night Songs with baritone Phillip Bullock.
The evening closes with a guided meditation by Negesti. There is no better way to mark Juneteenth than this: a chamber orchestra on the grass in the heart of Manhattan, playing music rooted in the Black American experience with power, precision, and joy.
World Music Institute: World of Percussion Re-Imagined
Brazilian, Cuban, Indian, Japanese, Indian drums | Fri, June 12 | 7pm
The World Music Institute: World of Percussion Re-Imagined is the percussion summit of the summer. This outdoor concert transforms Bryant Park’s lawn into a global stage celebrating rhythmic traditions. The performance showcases a diverse spectrum of global percussion, seamlessly weaving together Indian tabla, Japanese taiko, Brazilian samba reggae, Cuban rumba, and contemporary electronic elements.
Every culture has the drum, and sometimes the drum comes from far away. But it’s always at the center of community celebrations.
Pedrito Martinez: A Cuban-born master of Afro-Cuban folkloric music, rumba, and the batá drum.
Kíko: Pedrito’s drum changed my life by making me aware of the ancestors. Nothing has been quite the same since. I don’t know why this happened to me, but it did, and powerfully so. It came to me through Pedrito’s batá drum.
Batalá New York: A premier all-womxn, Black-led ensemble executing high-energy Afro-Brazilian percussion and dance. Samba-Reggae is a study in contrasts. It slows down samba’s intensity and rocks back on the low-end bass of the surdos drums.
Cyro Baptista: An innovative Brazilian percussionist known for pushing the boundaries of traditional rhythm.
Kíko: I did a performance photo shoot with Cyro 20 years ago as ModaFoto. You have to admire his endless carnival energy. He is the life of the party. He has become the drum. He resonates.
Loire Cotler & Glen Velez: Velez, a Mexican American, four-time Grammy-winning frame drum pioneer, collaborates with Cotler, an American rhythm vocalist renowned for her work on the Dune film scores.
Sunny Jain: An expert Indian American, dhol player, drummer, and composer exploring the sounds of the cultural diaspora.
Suphala: A trailblazing Indian American tabla player and producer bridging classical Indian training with modern electronics.
Kaoru Watanabe: A Japanese American composer blending traditional Japanese taiko and folk music with experimental jazz improvisation.
Adam Rudolph: A Jewish American world music pioneer and master percussionist known for his unique multi-piece organic orchestras.
SOLE Defined / It’s Showtime NYC!
African American & Diasporic hip hop, tap, and percussive dance | Thu, June 11 | 7-8:30pm
Two powerhouse companies rooted in African Diasporic tradition share the stage on June 11. SOLE Defined — founded by Guggenheim Choreographer Ryan K. Johnson — presents “The Pulse,” a polyrhythmic journey through tap, body percussion, and sand dance that traces global rhythmic patterns through the human body and pulls the audience directly into the performance itself.
It’s Showtime NYC!, the street dance company that became the first resident dance company at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, follows with a live mix of rap, electric cello, and hip-hop dance — raw, direct, and grounded in the New York street tradition that grew from African American and Afro-Caribbean roots.
New York City Opera: American Classics
African American and Puerto Rican sopranos | Fri, May 29 | 7-9pm
Larisa Martínez is a Puerto Rican soprano who sings on the world’s great stages, has been touring with pop opera star Andrea Bocelli, and regularly collaborates with violinist Joshua Bell.
Latonia Moore is a multiple Grammy-winning African American soprano who sings on the world’s great stages. She has been singing Bess in Porgy and Bess at the Metropolitan Opera and other great world operas.
Wycliffe Gordon and Friends
African American jazz | Thu, May 28 | 7-8:30pm
Harlem-based Jazzmobile — the first US nonprofit created specifically for jazz — opens the 2026 season with trombonist Wycliffe Gordon, five-time Jazz Journalists Association Trombonist of the Year and a veteran of the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra under Wynton Marsalis.
Gordon’s plunger mute mastery and hard-swinging quartet style feel like a direct line from the 1930s to the present. It is exactly the right way to kick off a summer of free music in New York City.
More Info
It all happens on the Bryant Park Lawn on Sixth Avenue at 42nd St. And it’s all FREE.