People
The Girl From Manhattan Plaza, Alicia Keys and Global Citizen
Alicia Keys was set for the Great Lawn with friends for Global Citizen until the storm, while her Hell's Kitchen musical carries her New York story around the world
Editor's note, September 28. On Friday, September 25, organizers canceled the Global Citizen Festival because of the nor'easter, the first cancellation in fourteen years, Global Citizen said. Ticket buyers are being refunded automatically, CBS New York reported, and Time Out reported that organizers promised the festival would return next year. The story below was written before the cancellation.
Manhattan Plaza rises forty-six stories over Hell's Kitchen. It is a subsidized complex for performing artists, and it is where Alicia Keys spent much of her childhood. She spent more than a decade turning that world into a Broadway musical. On Saturday she is scheduled to sing in the open air in the middle of the island, uptown from the building that made her.
Keys is set to play this year's Global Citizen Festival on the Great Lawn in Central Park. The organizers announced on September 10 that she would appear as "Alicia Keys & friends," a special performance with guests the announcement did not name. She joins a bill that already included Ms. Lauryn Hill and Wyclef Jean, Lenny Kravitz, John Legend, Lainey Wilson, Shaboozey, and TOMORROW X TOGETHER, with Victoria Monét, YEONJUN, and YOSHIKI added alongside her. Hugh Jackman is set to return as host for a twelfth straight year, according to CBS New York.
Passing the Mic
Keys framed the night in personal terms. In the festival's announcement, she said there is "nothing like standing on that Global Citizen stage in the middle of Central Park, in my city." She pointed to a campaign called the People's Bill of Rights 250, which she described as a way of "passing the mic" so that more voices are heard.
The festival itself runs on a trade. Most tickets are free, earned by taking actions through the Global Citizen app. This year New Yorkers could also earn entry by volunteering around the city through September, planting, cleaning beaches, and donating food with local partners like the Bowery Mission and the Jamaica Bay-Rockaway Parks Conservancy. App users who have earned enough points can also skip the free ticket lottery and give $25 to lock in a ticket, with that money going to the City Parks Foundation and to groups helping homeless New Yorkers. Paid general admission starts at $79, CBS New York reports.
The stated goals are large and specific. Global Citizen says this year's push aims to open school opportunities for two million children, support 1.5 million smallholder farmers, and bring electricity to 2.5 million homes.
There's nothing like standing on that Global Citizen stage in the middle of Central Park, in my city.
The Weather Is the Wild Card
Then there is the sky. A nor'easter is moving up the coast, and the forecast has only darkened. On Friday the Daily News reported that rain and strong winds were expected to arrive Friday evening, with bursts of heavy rain through Saturday afternoon and the storm at its worst from Saturday evening into Sunday. That window overlaps the concert. The city has a travel advisory in place through Sunday morning, and a wind advisory warns of gusts up to 55 miles per hour. CBS New York reports that gates are set to open at 2 p.m. and the music at 4, rain or shine, with a finish around 10. Organizers say the final call on whether it is safe belongs to NYC Parks. As of Friday, the reports we reviewed carried no word of a postponement.
The Great Lawn has been here before. In 2023 the festival went ahead in heavy rain, and the Daily News recalls how tens of thousands of fans churned the grass into mud. The lawn then had to shut two months ahead of its usual winter closing so crews could repair and replant it. This year the Parks Department says it is laying extra flooring, pre-seeding the turf, and roping off vulnerable areas. A festival spokesperson told the Daily News that if anything is damaged, Global Citizen covers the cost, as it has in the past. Council Member Gale Brewer, whose district includes the park, has argued the concert belongs on Randalls Island instead.
For the crowd, the rules are worth reading twice. Umbrellas are on the prohibited list, along with chairs, blankets, and most bags, CBS New York notes. On a wet night in the park that means ponchos, hoods, and a certain amount of surrender. It is the kind of evening we have written about before, the city refusing to go home just because the weather turned.
A Love Letter That Travels
The Central Park set lands while the musical built from her life is on the road. Hell's Kitchen, with a book by Kristoffer Díaz and direction by Michael Greif, opened Off Broadway in 2023 and moved to Broadway a year later. It picked up thirteen Tony nominations and won two, the Toronto Star notes. Its North American tour opened a run at Toronto's CAA Ed Mirvish Theatre on September 23 that lasts through October 25, and the Baltimore Banner reports a stop at the Hippodrome in November, after a Broadway run of nearly two years. Earlier this year Keys also oversaw a translation of the entire production into Korean.
The story follows Ali, seventeen, who lives with her single mother in Hell's Kitchen, falls in love, and discovers what she can do with music. Keys told the Star that the show turned out to be a love story between a mother and a daughter. It is also, she said, "a love story to the city that raised me."
Her own mother gave her that city. Keys told the Star that her mother came to New York from Toledo, Ohio, to act, and brought her as a baby to rehearsals, where she would fall asleep in theater seats. When she was older, the two of them caught shows on half-price tickets. She has described those shows as time the two of them shared.
The rest of the origin story is well documented. The Globe and Mail notes that Keys finished high school at sixteen at the top of her class and started at Columbia University before leaving to make music full time. When she signed with Columbia Records, she told the Globe, she was offered a Steinway baby grand. Her manager told her not to sign for a piano. She ended up owning it anyway, and it is still in her house.
What New York represents is the potential, the possibility, the ability to become who we've never been.
That line is hers, from the Star interview, and it could hang over the Great Lawn on Saturday. If the storm arrives on schedule and the show goes ahead, she will be singing to a field of ponchos, a subway ride from the tower where she grew up. Whether it does is up to the weather and the city.