climate sing - martha redbone
3pm - 5pm | Sun June 21
Brooklyn Bridge Park,
Pier 3 - Greenway Terrace
A communal sing-along, community building, and climate awareness gathering featuring a brand-new song written and led by Martha Redbone – known for her unique gumbo of folk, blues, and gospel.
Bring your blankets and snacks.
Lift your voices in a joyful noise.
Create a new soundtrack for the planet.
We’ll also sing previous commissions by Sxip Shirey and Eisa Davis, and you can join in creative art-making activities from the brilliant vision of Oscar Escobedo and the Brooklyn Bridge Park Education Department.
COMMISSIONED ARTISTS
-

Eisa Davis
EISA DAVIS is an award-winning actor, writer, and singer-songwriter working on stage and screen. She was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama for her play Bulrusher (Best of Bay Area Theater 2023), and wrote and starred in Angela’s Mixtape, named a best of the year by The New Yorker. Other plays include Ramp (Ruby Prize winner), The History of Light (Barrymore nomination), Paper Armor, Umkovu, Six Minutes, Warriors Don’t Cry, ||: Girls :||: Chance :||: Music :||, and Mushroom. Angela’s Mixtape + The History of Light are now published together in a volume from 53rd State Press/TCG. Collaborations include AFROFEMONONOMY // WORK THE ROOTS, Maze at The Shed, The House on Coco Road, Active Ingredients, Hip Hop Anansi, and Cirque du Soleil’s first ice show, Crystal. Current projects include a sound art installation/performance piece entitled The Essentialisn’t, and songs for a musical version of Devil In A Blue Dress. Eisa wrote for both seasons of the Netflix series She’s Gotta Have It, and co-wrote two episodes for the FX series Justified: City Primeval. She is the co-writer of the WARRIORS concept album with Lin-Manuel Miranda.
-
Martha Redbone
“We are the underdog, we’re the fighters getting ready for the next round…”
Martha Redbone is an American vocalist, songwriter, composer, educator, and United States Artist Fellow, celebrated for her “brilliant collision of cultures” (The New Yorker), embodying the folk and mountain blues sounds of her childhood in “Coal country” Harlan County, Kentucky with the eclectic grit of her teenage years in pre-gentrified Brooklyn. With music that celebrates her Southeastern Indigenous and African American culture, Martha broadens the boundaries of American Roots music. Songs and storytelling share her life experience as an Afro-Indigenous woman in an ever-changing world. Working in partnership with longtime collaborator Aaron Whitby, their works include Original Music and Score for the 2022 Broadway revival “for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuff, Ntozake Shange and 2020 Drama Desk Award- Outstanding Composer in a Play, Public Theater, NYC. Their musical works uplift issues of social justice, connecting cultures and celebrating the human spirit.
-

Sxip Shirey
Sxip Shirey is an international composer, producer, sound artist, and sonic pioneer. His compositions, performances and curated evenings “Sxip’s Hour of Charm” established him as a fixture in New York’s underground art scene and internationally. He makes music, sound design and Foley for theater, dance and film. His community-inclusive, immersive choral works, "The Gauntlet," developed with Coco Karol, have been created for Rockefeller Center, The Sydney Opera House, Bard College, Friends of the Highline, Cleveland Museum of Art, and virtually in 3D immersive sound for NYU Abu Dhabi Arts Center. He is a collaborator of singer, scholar, and song composer Rhiannon Giddens, and released tracks together that include “All Babies Must Cry,” “Woman of Constant Sorrow,” and “Just the Two of Us.”