BY CLARISSA-JAN LIM | Due to the unexpected level of amplified sound from the summer concert series at Pier 26, the event’s organizer, the Hudson River Park Trust, has decided against scheduling the concert series at the Tribeca pier next summer. A recent performance at the pier by the indie-pop band fun. was not fun, but incredibly noisy, local residents complained.
The Trust arranged for the 2013 summer concert series to take place on Pier 26, at N. Moore St., based on prior experiences producing successful concerts on Piers 54 and 84. However, Madelyn Wils, the Trust’s president, writing in an open letter to the community this week, said, “We did not realize that sound from Pier 26 with this speaker configuration would reverberate in surrounding buildings to the degree that has been reported by many of our neighbors.”
The concert series at Pier 26 was a pilot program undertaken by the Trust in a one-season partnership with The Bowery Presents. While some Tribeca residents enjoyed the amplified music, many were mortified by it.
“We are unhappy that the community is so divided, therefore the series will not return to this location,” Wils wrote. A location for next year’s concerts has yet to be determined.
The contract signed with The Bowery Presents extends for the rest of the season, and tickets have been sold for the remaining concerts.
Another three performances will take place at Pier 26, on Aug. 10 (featuring One Republic, plus Mayer Hawthorne and Serena Ryder), and Sept. 6 (Empire of the Sun) and 7 (Passion Pit), before the concert series ends for this summer.
The artists who performed at the series’s two previous dates this summer at Pier 26 include U.K. “2-tone ska” legends The Specials, in addition to fun., which won two Grammy awards this year for what critics call their over-enthusiastically produced brand of indie-pop.
The Trust has hired an acoustic consultant to “propose and develop mitigation” for the remaining performances, and sound levels have been significantly reduced.
