The Queens Jazz Trail Concert Series has one free show left this summer: Armenian-American vocalist and violinist Lucy Yeghiazaryan closes out the run on Thursday, August 27, at Astoria Park, playing a Tony Bennett centennial set at 7 p.m. It caps eight consecutive Thursdays of free jazz staged in parks across the borough, a lineup first reported by QNS.
The series ran from July 9 through August 27, one concert a week, each in a different Queens park, all of them free, open to the public, and scheduled to go on rain or shine at 7 p.m. It is presented by the Kupferberg Center for the Arts, Flushing Town Hall and the Louis Armstrong House Museum in partnership with NYC Parks, and it borrows its name from Flushing Town Hall’s Queens Jazz Trail Map, which plots the addresses where jazz legends lived and played across the borough.
That history is the whole point. Since the 1920s, Queens has been home base for a long list of jazz greats, including Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, Dizzy Gillespie and Charles Mingus. The concert series is built to put live music back into the neighborhoods where those musicians actually lived.
“We’re proud to continue celebrating the extraordinary jazz history of Queens through this concert series,” Kupferberg Center for the Arts Director Jon Yanofsky said. “Each summer, these performances bring communities together in parks across the borough while honoring the artists and cultural traditions that helped shape jazz history right here in Queens.”
The 2026 lineup leaned into anniversaries. Saxophonist Vincent Herring and trombonist and seashellist Steve Turre played a John Coltrane centennial at Baisley Pond Park in Jamaica on July 16. Trumpeter Wallace Roney Jr., the son of Wallace Roney Sr. and Geri Allen, marked a Miles Davis centennial at Archie Spigner Park, also in Jamaica, on August 13. And Yeghiazaryan’s August 27 Astoria Park set honors Tony Bennett’s centennial.
The rest of the calendar ranged wide. Grammy-nominated flutist Itai Kriss opened the season at Travers Park in Jackson Heights on July 9 with his ensemble Telavana, which fuses Israeli, Afro-Caribbean and Brazilian sounds. Six-time Grammy winner Arturo O’Farrill brought Afro-Latin jazz to the Forest Park Bandshell in Woodhaven on July 23. Trombonist John Yao and his 17-piece Instrument band played Bowne Park in Flushing on July 30. And trombonist Wycliffe Gordon, a former member of the Wynton Marsalis Septet and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, played Rockaway Beach Park on August 6.
One show did not happen as planned. Brass Queens, the female-led Brooklyn brass band that was booked for Cunningham Park in Fresh Meadows on August 20, was cancelled because of the weather, and the Kupferberg Center said there would be no rain date.
The series is supported by the Howard Gilman Foundation, Resorts World New York City, Northwell Health, Maspeth Federal Savings, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, AARP New York and Queens College. For the Astoria Park finale, bring a blanket, a lawn chair and a picnic; the full lineup and any updates are posted at kupferbergcenter.org/qjt.
Featured image: Photo courtesy of the Kupferberg Center for the Arts
