Greenwich Village Folk Festival to Mark 40th Anniversary With Concert
Suzanne Vega, Noel Paul Stookey, John McCutcheon and other performers are set to headline the lineup.
The Village Trip will present a concert celebrating the 40th anniversary of the Greenwich Village Folk Festival, part of a slate of free and low-cost autumn events for New Yorkers. The lineup includes performers Suzanne Vega, Noel Paul Stookey, John McCutcheon, Crys Matthews, Rod MacDonald and Guy Davis.
The Village Trip is an annual festival celebrating Arts and Activism across Greenwich Village and the East Village. TVT2026, 'Celebrating Voices that Changed the World,' runs Friday, September 25 through Sunday, October 4.
The Village Trip's signature free concert will take place this year on Saturday October 3, in the Meatpacking District on Gansevoort Plaza, where attendees can enjoy music while sampling fare from the restaurants and bars that ring the Plaza.
The Village Trip will also present The Slambovian Circus of Dreams, whose Woodstock-tinged psychedelia, with subtle accents of southern rock, Celtic and British folk, is described as a slice of Americana.
'We're excited to be part of The Village Trip, a festival that honors the creative spirit and legacy of Greenwich Village,' said Joziah and Tink. 'The heritage of that adventurous and upending time opened our minds and hearts toward creating a better world. Our band is happy to be carrying that 'flag' with you all into the 21st century!'
'We're thrilled to welcome The Village Trip Festival to Gansevoort Plaza for the first time this year, bringing its spirit of creativity, community and cultural exchange into the heart of the Meatpacking District,' says Jeffrey LeFrancois, Executive Director of the Meatpacking Business Improvement District. 'It's a wonderful opportunity to celebrate the artists, writers and musicians whose ideas helped shape New York and to experience the energy that makes Lower Manhattan such an enduring center for artistic expression.'
Festival Events
Framing the Village Exhibition: Independent Thinkers! Thu September 3 @ 12:00 am - September 30 @ 11:59 pm EDT. St Mark's in the Bowery, 131 East 10th Street, New York, NY, United States. The fifth Village Trip Art Exhibition, curated by East Village-based artist, art historian, and tour guide Marc Kehoe, celebrates the Manhattan artists who are today's Independent Thinkers, continuing to excite, inform, beautify, and challenge the city and the world with their aesthetic innovations in figurative, abstract, and conceptual drawing painting, sculpture, photography, and electronic art. The gallery is open to the public most days until 3pm. Free
Wonderful Town – A Walking Tour with Jamie Bernstein. Thu September 24 @ 4:00 pm - 5:30 pm EDT. Northwest corner of 14th Street and 7th Avenue, New York, NY, United States. Writes Jamie Bernstein: 'Come along!' booms the tour guide in Wonderful Town's opening number, 'Christopher Street.' This 1953 Broadway show – book and lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green and score by my dad, Leonard Bernstein – is a love letter to the dizzy, bohemian good old days of Greenwich Village, as seen through the adventures of two sisters from Ohio. All these years later, I'm inviting you to 'come along!' as I retrace some of the Village spots that appear in the show, plus a few additional points of interest. $30 – $35
The Ukrainian Museum at 50: Special Guided Tour. Fri September 25 @ 2:30 pm - 4:30 pm EDT. The Ukrainian Museum, 222 East 6th Street, New York, NY, United States. To honour the 50th year of The Ukrainian Museum, founded by the Ukrainian National Women's League of America and a cultural anchor in East Village, The Village Trip is offering a guided tour of two exhibitions: A Living Canvas, which follows the formal threads—Color, Form, Geometry, Figuration, Texture, Line, Black & White, and Ornamentation—that run through fine art and folk art; and The Ground Shifts Beneath Our Feet, New York City's first retrospective of Zhanna Kadyrova, who opened this year's Venice Biennale and is one of the most internationally acclaimed Ukrainian artists working today. $25
We The People – Poetica Musica. Fri September 25 @ 7:00 pm - 8:30 pm EDT. St John's in the Village, 218 W 11th St, New York, NY, United States. Two hundred and fifty years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the words of the Founding Fathers feel newly urgent. Gathering to hear American music, in a city that has always stood for pluralism and possibility and in a neighborhood that was described by poet Mascha Kaléko as 'the Melting Pot in the Melting Pot' is itself an act of faith — in what the Republic has been, and in what it still can be. In 'We the People,' Poetica Musica draws on music from America's first 25 decades – including works by Robert Beaser, Aaron Copland, William Bolcom, Hall Johnson, and others — to trace a thread of distinctly American expression across generations and styles. $20 – $30
Woody Guthrie's Songs to Grow On. Sat September 26 @ 10:30 am - 12:30 pm EDT. Little Red School House and Elisabeth Irwin High School, 272 Sixth Avenue/Bleecker Street, New York, NY, United States. Woody Guthrie's Songs to Grow On is a 40-minute interactive theater experience created especially for children ages 2–5—yet delightful for audiences of all ages. Presented by New York City Children's Theater with The Village Trip, the production introduces young audiences to Guthrie's music while exploring curiosity, empathy, and community through playful, hands-on engagement. A brand-new show, it is based on an unpublished manuscript by Woody Guthrie and the 1956 album Songs to Grow On for Mother and Child. Original script by Frank Ruiz, with direction by Susanna Brock. $10 – $20
Wild Women of The Village: Paint, Poetry, Clay and Camera, walking tour. Sat September 26 @ 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm EDT. Washington Square Arch at Fifth Avenue & Washington Square North, NY, United States. Behind every talented artist in Greenwich Village, there is a powerful, talented and liberated Village woman. From Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney opening her studio in a former stable to a mysterious DaDA poet, artist and Baroness inventing (and getting arrested for) 'wearable art,' and from Mabel Dodge's wild all-night salons to the first exhibitions of revolutionary paintings by Lee Krasner, Joan Mitchell and Helen Frankenthaler, the Village and its environs would not be what it is today without women artists – and writers and photographers. $30 – $35
Reading the Declaration of Independence: A Conversation About Our Past and Present. Sat September 26 @ 4:00 pm - 6:00 pm EDT. NYU Tisch Hall, NYU, 40 West 4th Street, Room LC1, New York, NY, United States. For the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, New Yorkers are invited to a roundtable discussion of the Declaration exploring what it meant in 1776 and what it means today. Robert Snyder, Professor Emeritus of American Studies and Journalism at Rutgers University and former Manhattan Borough Historian, will lead the conversation. Free
The Ahn Trio with James Moore: The Art of Collaboration: Sting, Jobim and Baechle. Sat September 26 @ 7:00 pm - 8:30 pm EDT. Greenwich House Music School, 46 Barrow Street, New York, NY, United States. Those who came to Bernstein Remix at TVT2025 will already be acquainted with the Ahn Trio, 'classical revolutionaries' (Newsday) who combine razor-sharp technique with the fierce energy of rock stars, seamlessly fusing classical music with rock, jazz, and multimedia. Their collaborations have wowed audiences around the world. President Obama invited them to perform at the White House State Dinner in honor of South Korean President Lee Myung-bak and First Lady Kim Yoon-ok. The Village Trip welcomes them back with The Art of Collaboration: Sting, Jobim and Baechle, an evening of duos, trios and quartets. $25 – $35
The Peoples' Voice Café: Songs of Freedom and Resistance. Sat September 26 @ 8:00 pm - 11:00 pm EDT. Assembly Hall, Judson Memorial Church, 239 Thompson Street, New York, NY, United States. The classic hootenanny, a multi-performer folk concert, returns to the heart of Greenwich Village as the Peoples' Voice Cafe presents Songs of Freedom and Resistance, an all-acoustic showcase featuring four longtime activist musicians: Judy Gorman, David Tarlo, Lindsey Wilson, and Adele Rolider. Each will do a 30-minute set. Attendees are invited to join in on the choruses as these four artists sing out for peace, human rights, and social justice. Free – $20
Beat Generation: Live Poetry, walking tour. Sun September 27 @ 11:30 am - 1:30 pm EDT. Village Voice, 36 Cooper Square, New York, NY, United States. A tour with authentic Beat poets from the Bowery visiting iconic Beat Generation locations, with live poetry recited and sung. Marcos de la Fuente and Annalisa Marí Pegrum lead the tour, offered in both English and Spanish. $30 – $35
Eugene O'Neill and the Village, walking tour. Sun September 27 @ 1:00 pm - 2:30 pm EDT. Jefferson Market Library, 425 6th Avenue, NY, United States. Cecilia Rubino, award-winning writer, theater director, filmmaker, and educator, leads a tour in the footsteps of Eugene O'Neill, America's first great playwright, through the Greenwich Village that inspired his revolutionary vision of the American theater. $30 – $35
Let Freedom Sing: Paul Robeson – His Words, His Music. A Tribute, with baritone James C Martin, pianist Lynn Raley. Sun September 27 @ 4:00 pm - 5:30 pm EDT. St Mark's in the Bowery, 131 East 10th Street, New York, NY, United States. Paul Robeson — singer, athlete, actor, activist — embodied all the promise of America at its best. He used his art as a weapon of justice and, as a global citizen, he spoke truth to power, heedless of the personal cost. 'Artists are the gatekeepers of truth,' he once said. 'We are civilization's radical voice.' Fifty years after his passing, his voice still rings out. Baritone James C Martin, with Lynn Raley at the piano, celebrates a program of Robeson's best-loved songs and his bravest words, spoken in a tumultuous time when many turned against him. The program also features a world première by David Amram and other composers, including Augusta Read Thomas, Chen Shih-hui, Erik Santos, Robert Wellington Pound, and Maria Thompson Corley setting words by Robeson's friend and fellow activist Langston Hughes. $25 – $35
25 Decades: The Horszowski Trio. Sun September 27 @ 7:00 pm - 8:30 pm EDT. Greenwich House Music School, 46 Barrow Street, New York, NY, United States. Since their New York debut in 2011, the Horszowski Trio – Jesse Mills, violin; Ole Akahoshi, cello; Rieko Aizawa, piano – has toured extensively throughout North America, Europe, the Far East, and India, earning a reputation as one of the most vital chamber ensembles of their generation. The centerpiece of their concert is the US premiere of 25 Decades, a piano trio by William Kentner Anderson — composer, guitarist, and Director of Classical and New Music for The Village Trip — performed alongside Brahms' Piano Trio No. 2 in C major, Op 87, a pairing that sets Anderson's new work in direct conversation with the Romantic tradition it both inherits and unsettles. $20 – $30
Vocal Gumbo: Voices of Dissent and Hope, with Janis Siegel and Lauren Kinhan. Sun September 27 @ 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm EDT. DROM, 85 Avenue A, NY, United States. Vocal Gumbo and The Village Trip combine their missions for one night of music at Drom in the East Village. Vocal Gumbo celebrates the diverse 'village of vocalists' in the regular series it has been producing since 2018, and The Village Trip celebrates the Village's rich history of arts and activism. The theme for the night is Musical Activism – Songs of Dissent and Hope. $35 – $60
Thomas Paine's Greenwich Village, walking tour. Mon September 28 @ 3:00 pm - 5:00 pm EDT. Marie's Crisis, 59 Grove Street, New York, United States. Before America had free speech, it had Thomas Paine: pamphleteer, provocateur, the sharpest pen behind two revolutions. He arrived in Greenwich Village broke and forgotten, boarding on Bleecker Street and dying on Grove Street in 1809 with only six mourners at his funeral. Marc Catapano leads this tour. $30 – $35
This Hammer Can't Kill Me: Paul Robeson, His Music and His Story. Mon September 28 @ 6:00 pm - 7:15 pm EDT. HB Playwrights Foundation Theatre, 124 Bank Street, New York, United States. Hosted by HB Studio, artistic home to Uta Hagen, who played Desdemona to Paul Robeson's Othello on Broadway, this public conversation with baritone James C Martin will explore Robeson's lasting impact as artist and activist, examining his political and artistic journey, and the sold-out 1958 Carnegie Hall concert that marked his comeback from 11 years on the political blacklist. Martin, and pianist-collaborator Lynn Raley, will share selections from Robeson's repertoire, and from their album, Wide As Heaven: A Century of Song By Black American Composers. $15 – $20
Janie Barnett Sings the Songs of Cole Porter: An Unlikely Renegade. Mon September 28 @ 7:30 pm - 9:00 pm EDT. The Bitter End, 147 Bleecker Street, New York, NY, United States. Born into Gilded Age luxury, Cole Porter defied family expectations to forge a life in popular music, trading classical expectations for exotic melodies, harmonic innovation and modern rhythms coupled with sophisticated, urbane lyrics packed with cultural references, sexual innuendo, and complex rhymes. Award-winning singer and arranger Janie Barnett reinterprets Porter's classics with raw, rootsy soul. $25 – $40
Founder and Fugitive: Aaron Burr's Greenwich Village, walking tour. Tue September 29 @ 3:00 pm - 5:00 pm EDT. Aaron Burr Tour, 160 Varick Street, New York, United States. Marc Catapano leads a tour exploring the Greenwich Village where Aaron Burr's brilliance, ambition and nefariousness combined to change the course of the country. $30 – $35
The 1960s and '70s Music of the West Village from Dylan and Springsteen to Woodstock and Beyond, walking tour. Tue September 29 @ 3:00 pm - 5:00 pm EDT. 1 West 4th Street at the corner of Mercer and W 4th Street, New York, NY, United States. Bob Dylan, Judy Collins, Simon & Garfunkel, Joni Mitchell, The Mamas & The Papas, Bruce Springsteen and others launched careers on the stages of Greenwich Village. Ann McDermott leads a tour on the real stories behind A Complete Unknown and the lives of Dylan, Pete Seeger and Joan Baez, and how The Woodstock Festival of Music and Art had its origins on Village streets. $25 – $30
Dorothy Day: A Radical Saint of the City. The Village Trip Lecture, given by Robert Ellsberg. Tue September 29 @ 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm EDT. Jefferson Market Library, 425 6th Avenue, NY, United States. Dorothy Day, champion of the oppressed, witness for peace, was born in Brooklyn and spent most of her life in New York's Lower East Side. In the 1920s, while working as a journalist for progressive papers, she became close to Eugene O'Neill and others in the Greenwich Village scene. After her conversion to Catholicism, she founded the Catholic Worker newspaper and the first of her 'houses of hospitality' combining service to the poor and work for justice. Robert Ellsberg, a former managing editor of the CW and editor of Day's writings, will describe her New York journey and her road to possible sainthood. Free
Women's Work. Tue September 29 @ 7:00 pm - 8:30 pm EDT. St John's in the Village, 218 W 11th St, New York, NY, United States. The Village Trip presents 'Women's Work,' an evening of music and poetry that explores the tension between the external demands placed on women and the rich creative interior lives they have always sustained. Central to the program is a world première from Greenwich Village composer Kitty Brazelton. The program also draws on works by Liz Queler (The Edna Project), Missy Mazzoli, Shoko Suzuki, Ann Southam, and Whitney George, alongside texts by Eleanor Roosevelt, Marcella Remund, Edna St Vincent Millay and Anne Lovering Rounds. $20 – $30
