SummerStage Founder Joe Killian Talks 40 Years of Music and Shares Some of the Best NYC Stories You’ve Never Heard
Categoria: Musica
The Central Park music series celebrates its 40th anniversary this year.
Por Billboard | 22/06/2026
When I meet Joe Killian at Central Park’s Rumsey Playfield — the outdoor concert venue that SummerStage has called home since 1990 — it’s a gorgeous summer morning in New York City. After unceremoniously tripping up a staircase, I make a comment about the weather to that effect. Killian gently corrects me: it’s not a “gorgeous” day, it’s a “perfect” day. Killian would know the difference. As the founder of SummerStage, the summer concert series in New York City that began with a free Sun Ra Arkestra concert in 1986 and has expanded to host free shows across all five boroughs over the next four decades, Killian has seen perfect days, nightmare days and nightmare days that, with the benefit of hindsight, are perfect fodder for great concert stories. SummerStage has witnessed, and been part of, Central Park’s transformation from the wasteland seen in films like The Warriors (1979) and Cruising (1980) to a tourist- and family-friendly green space. In 1993, after Killian steered the series through its early lean years, the City Parks Foundation officially took over management of SummerStage, after which Killian turned his attention to another iconic NYC location, Radio City Music Hall, and founded Killian + Company (which involved him in a variety of other endeavors, including the bizarre but delightful Duran Duran concert David Lynch filmed for American Express in 2011) and became an Emmy winner. The musical legends who have appeared at SummerStage are too numerous to rattle off, but for a quick attempt: James Brown, Stevie Wonder, Joan Baez, Celia Cruz, David Byrne, Public Enemy, Patti Smith, The Killers, Mavis Staples, Chaka Khan, Beck, Yoko Ono and more. This year, Angélique Kidjo, Laurie Anderson, De La Soul, Spoon, Black Country, Horsegirl, returning performer Mavis Staples and more are part of the series. At this point, SummerStage is part of the city’s live music fabric, an NYC institution. But if you had told that to a young Joe Killian in the late ‘80s when he was scraping pennies to get performers onto the stage at Central Park’s Naumburg Bandshell, he probably would have thought you were smoking something provided by one of the park’s then-plentiful dealers. For its 40th anniversary, Killian sat down with Billboard to look back upon SummerStage’s beginnings, its near-misses and his idea for a free music series that connected all of New York City. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the SummerStage visionary set the tone for the topics before we began. DCK News Joe Killian: Before we start, I have to comment on your shirt – Big Star. Billboard: Yes, I love Big Star. They recorded at Ardent Studios in Memphis, a great music town. I booked a show for B.B. King’s 70th birthday [in 1995]. We had everybody from Willie Nelson to Slash, and it was very special. I had gone to the studio that Willie Mitchell recorded all the famous Al Green records. The studio is essentially a little more than a garage. It was pretty funky and ramshackle, shal