New York City plans to celebrate the impending end of the lockdown with a huge pop concert in Central Park.
In an interview with the New York Times, Mayor Bill de Blasio said the concert is part of a “Homecoming Week” to show the world that the city has moved on from the pandemic.
The concert will take place on August 21 on the renowned Great Lawn in the park, where Carole King (1973), Elton John (1980) and Luciano Pavarotti (1993), among others, performed for hundreds of thousands of people.
The three-hour show will consist of eight “iconic” stars whose names have not yet been announced. The city leaves the planning to 89-year-old producer Clive Davis, known for collaborations with Bruce Springsteen, Aretha Franklin, and Whitney Houston.
Due to corona, only 60,000 spectators are allowed to attend the concert, a fraction compared to, for example, the 400,000 spectators who attended the Simon & Garfunkel reunion in 1981. Tickets will be free, and the concert will be broadcast worldwide.
The city is still working on a possible solution to any public health complications that the organization of the large-scale event may entail. For example, the introduction of a vaccination passport, the so-called Excelsior Pass, is still difficult to achieve. So far, only 1.1 million of New York State’s 9.1 million vaccinated residents have downloaded the pass.
The concert is also intended to emphasize the importance of vaccination. The public will be divided into sections for the vaccinated, who will get 70 percent of the tickets, and the unvaccinated.