NY Philharmonic At Prospect Park

Every year, the NY Philharmonic hosts a program called New York Philharmonic: Concerts in the Parks. This involves the New York Philharmonic performing in various parks around NYC. The various venues include Central Park, which holds the most number of shows for them, Prospect Park, Bronx, Staten Island, and Queens.

I had plans to go to the performance in Central Park. The special part this year was that one of the performances had the Shanghai Philharmonic join in with the NY Phil to perform, the first event of its type in Central Park. However, due to the weather forecasts where rain was imminent if it wasn’t already raining during the day, I could not make it to any of the Central Park performances. Eventually, I convinced a few of my friends to join me on a Friday for the performance in Prospect Park.



When I arrived, you could see quite a few people walking into the park. These people seem to be a lot more prepared than I was. They were carrying food, blankets, folding chairs, and various other necessities for the park. When a few more of us arrived at the entrance, we walked into the park to find a good spot to sit. We didn’t go very far inside thinking the speaker system would be good enough to hear all around, but we were sorely mistaken.

We settled into our spot that we had picked out to try to make it easier for any late comer friends to find us. Eventually the performance started and we could hear the music pretty clearly as long as everyone around us stayed quiet. The philharmonic performed for about 2 hours or so with a few intermissions. I am not much of a classical music aficionado so I did not recognize many pieces.

As the sun started to set, the last piece of the performance was played and then the fireworks started. This was what I was waiting for all this time. The fireworks turned out to be pretty amazing and they were very enjoyable. We stayed until the end of the fireworks and then made our way out of the park.

The next stop was the No Pork Chinese restaurant on 4th ave in Brooklyn. Possibly one of the oldest Halal Chinese places in the city. We ordered and picked up our food from there and then headed off to the South Street Seaport to chow down. The view from the seaport was amazing all around. Brooklyn Queens Expressway, Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges, and the Manhattan skylines were all visible from this one spot. We got done eating around midnight and the area was still pretty lively. Eventually, it came time for me to head home and a great evening came to an end.