Patti Smith returns to singing live with Brooklyn concert

NEW YORK (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 lead 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...