With the passing of Labor Day, summer is unofficially over, which means it's time for some fall fun — and no place offers more to do than New York City. Here are a five festivals happening this month that you won't want to miss:
- Generations in Jazz Festival: The Generations in Jazz Festival was created in 2010 to insure the future of jazz music by passing it along to younger generations. In keeping with this tradition, the fifth-annual installment features artists that span three generations, including an 11-year-old piano prodigy named Joey Alexander, 89-year-old jazz legend Roy Haynes, and everyone in between. Throughout the month of September, jazz fans will be treated to performances of music by Fats Waller, John Coltrane, Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong at Lincoln Center’s Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola.
- BAM Next Wave Festival: Officially inaugurated in 1983 (it ran in a looser form the two previous autumns), BAM's annual Next Wave Festival serves as New York's most comprehensive and daring survey of avant-garde music, theater, opera and dance. Among this year’s highlights, Shakespeare’s sonnets staged by Next Wave mainstay Robert Wilson and the Berliner Ensemble, with a score by Rufus Wainwright; Beckett plays from the Royal Court Theater and Mighty Mouth, a revival of Tony Kushner’s Angels in America (both parts 1 and 2) by Dutch director Ivo van Hove and his Tonneelgroep Amsterdam; music from Philip Glass, Meredith Monk and Vijay Iyer; and new dance pieces from Benjamin Millepied, William Forsythe and Justin Peck. Expect intriguing work from emerging avant-garde talents, with plenty of artist talks worked into the stew.
- DUMBO Arts Festival: With its industrial spaces easily converted to studios, DUMBO underwent a radical transformation into a thriving community for art and design. The DUMBO Arts Festival honors that creativity with an all-out three-day festival at the end of September that draws hundreds of thousands of visitors to around 100 open studios, 50 galleries and stages and no shortage of art and performance spilling out from work spaces and storefronts into the streets—with outdoor installations, murals, large-scale projections and plenty of poets, dancers and buskers plying their trades.
- 30th Annual Medieval Festival: The Medieval Festival brings to life the customs and spirit of the Middle Ages. Manhattan's Fort Tryon Park is transformed into a medieval market town decorated with bright banners and processional flags. Performers, guests and festival goers dress in medieval costume. Visitors are greeted by authentic medieval music, dance, magic, and minstrels, as well as jugglers and jesters. The afternoon is concluded with a thrilling joust between four knights on horseback. Costumed vendors will be on hand to demonstrate and sell a wide variety of medieval crafts as well as food and drink.
- 40th Annual Atlantic Antic: The largest and most celebrated street festival in New York City, the Atlantic Antic is one mile long, spanning over four neighborhoods from 4th Avenue to Hicks Street, comprising of over 500 merchants and vendors, ten musical stages and attracting over one million attendees. Families enjoy pony rides, storytelling, and face painting on an entire block dedicated solely to kid-friendly activities. Best known for its eclectic delicacies, the Antic highlights an array of food from around the world in addition to street fair favorites like funnel cake, sausage sandwiches, and roasted corn.