Going behind the scenes of Celebrate Brooklyn! with festival producer Jack Walsh

Brooklyn’s epicenter of cool since 1979, the BRIC Celebrate Brooklyn! Festival, returned this week for a summer of mostly free shows at the Prospect Park Bandshell with an opening concert by Brooklyn’s own Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings. City & State’s Jeff Coltin talked to the festival’s executive producer and BRIC vice president, Jack Walsh, about opening up the park, celebrating the borough and why concertgoers should thank the mayor.

C&S: Cuban trumpets, psychedelic rock, live orchestras – the festival always features such an eclectic mix of artists. What do you look for in a good show?

JW: The festival is in its 38th year, so it’s New York’s longest-running performance festival. With that history comes a bit of curatorial perspective and a way in which we try to both honor our history and what the festival is and what the festival has done, and also keep it fresh and keep it unique and try to have some performances and some artists that you’re not going to see anywhere else.

The first half of that is a history and mission-based approach to really celebrate Brooklyn’s diverse cultures and offer all Brooklynites an opportunity to come together in a safe, harmonious setting and explore and interact and experience each other’s cultures. And that’s kind of what we’ve done with the festival all the way back to 1979. More recently, we’ve really been trying to go deeper and create some unique programming with artists.

C&S: You call it a festival, but it’s really a series of shows. Do you curate it as separate shows, or do you think of it as an ongoing festival?

JW: It is a series of shows. It’s not like a multistage festival, it’s one stage. We really focus on maximizing the production values on the one stage that we have. Many, many people consider it the best place to see an outdoor show in New York. It is a series of shows, but we have always thought of it as a festival, we’ve always called it a festival. It is a summer-long festival of performances, just a different format. 

C&S: I understand you’re kind of a roots-and-country guy. Does that fly in Brooklyn?

JW: My taste is pretty wide-ranging, actually. I played music all through the ’80s. I was in a rock band that played all over New York, then I was in a reggae band that played all over Europe. I really do love roots music and Americana in various shapes and forms. But we bring all of that into the mix. Historically you’ll see that in every line-up. I think Americana is a big part of what we want to have in each and every season. 

C&S: The mayor is a Brooklynite and from Park Slope, not far from the Prospect Park Bandshell. Has he supported the festival differently than past mayors?

JW: Bill is very busy! He was the City Council member from Park Slope and represented the district that included the festival. Many years ago he was able to secure some funding for us that purchased us a new sound system, so every show that you hear at Celebrate Brooklyn sounds great because Bill helped us get a new sound system many years ago.

More recently, since he’s become mayor, between him and the borough president’s office and the City Council, they were able to allocate some capital funding for further improvements and renovation of the bandshell and the surrounding landscape. That project is in design now and we hope will begin construction in 2017. We have a $4 million allocation that probably happened because of the mayor’s support of the festival. The borough president, the City Council all approved it as well, so it’s kind of a collective effort, but he’s definitely a fan. He’s been attending the performances for many, many years, has been on stage many times. He’s truly a music fan, and I really have been surprised at how knowledgeable he is about the music. He’s come to our opening night show each year for the past three years and we hope he’ll be here this year. He’s a busy guy now, generally slips in while the show’s underway and catches some of it. And if he’s not being called away, he generally stays a little while and enjoys himself.

C&S: Most of the shows are free. Why is that so important to you? What does that mean for the arts in the city?

JW: The reason for the festival, the mission, it had both a civic and an arts mission. The civic part of the mission back in ’79 was the words “Celebrate Brooklyn,” both its people and its culture and its artists. So the civic part was to bring people back into Prospect Park after the park had suffered years of neglect, activate the park, do it at night, which was kind of a radical idea at the time. And get people back into the park and utilizing this somewhat scuffed up gem that is Prospect Park.

The arts side, there’s so many musicians and artists in Brooklyn, and we wanted to give them a platform to perform and share their work. Some of those very famous jazz musicians that were all in Bed-Stuy and Fort Greene at the time –Betty Carter, Randy Weston, Max Roach –they were all featured in the early years of the festival.

And the third piece is really the people of Brooklyn. It’s for everybody. The idea is to gather as a community, celebrate each other’s culture, come together in a safe, harmonious setting, and really have all Brooklynites come together.

C&S: You’ve been with Celebrate Brooklyn for decades. A lot has been said of the demographic changes in Park Slope and Brooklyn as a whole. Has that changed your job, or is music universal enough where it’s the same?

JW: I’m born and raised in Park Slope. I still live in the neighborhood, so I’ve seen it change many times. Waves of change over decades. We’re definitely cognizant of that, and I think we’re just more clearly focused about how we’re not only putting artists on stage that represent different cultures and artists of color and so on, but that we’re actually choosing artists that will attract diverse audiences. That’s something that we’re very intentional about. We’re hoping that each and every show finds its audience, attracts an audience. That could be specific. But the flip side of that, we’re hoping that when people look at the lineup, they may not know 80 percent of the names in the lineup. We think we’ve earned a place of trust with so many people that they look at it say ‘hey, that sounds interesting, it’s a no-risk evening, let’s check it out.’ And many times, the composition of the audience is quite diverse, and that’s very gratifying.

C&S: I have a confession: I’ve hung out in the grass behind the Bandshell and listened to some of the ticketed shows for free – and I wasn’t alone. How do you feel about the freeloaders?

JW: That’s great! We do screen the fence so you can’t see the show without a ticket. And a ticketed show means you have to have a ticket to get in and that’s one of many ways in which we try to create revenue to support the free performances. It’s not the only way, there’s a diverse set of sources of support. And that’s just smart, you know, from a not-for-profit business sense. We try to keep the benefit concerts few and special. Twenty-five free performances this summer, seven ticketed shows. That’s about as far as we want to go. We try and pick shows that resonate with a diverse crowd as well for the ticketed shows. On the front end next week we have Tame Impala, who’s a great, psychedelic rock band who appeals to a lot of young folks; they were at Governor’s Ball last year. But our last benefit show of the summer is the legendary jazz musician Herbie Hancock. We put as much effort into choosing the ticketed shows as the free shows so that it not only supports the free shows but helps us create an offering of great, diverse lineups.

As it relates to your question about the folks who come to enjoy it outside – great! That’s fine by us, and if people sit back and lay down on a blanket and just listen to the music wafting over them, I think that’s a great way to activate a park.