RIVER RHYME
Saturday, September 20, 2025 - 4pm & 6pm
Sunday, September 21, 2025 - 11am & 1pm
each performance runs about 40 minutes
West Harlem Piers at 132nd St. Manhattan, New York, NY
Map here
River Rhyme is a live music performance featuring a brass and percussion ensemble sited at the edge of the Hudson River, on the West Harlem Piers. With the river itself as a sounding source, the performance invites listeners to contemplate the musical, political, and environmental histories of human interaction with our rivers.
Societies, cities, and civilizations have been birthed by their connection to waterways and rivers. From the Seine, the Thames, the Rhine, to the Yellow, Ganges, Nile, Irrawaddy, and to the Hudson, humans have interacted with inland water systems to grow crops, facilitate trade, and navigate new and future courses in their histories, for good and ill. River Rhyme is a music performance that builds on these histories through sound, music, text, with striking visual elements.
Created by John P. Hastings & Aaron Meicht
Music direction by Aaron Meicht
Costume & Set Design by Kathleen Geldard
Graphic Design by Shu Tu
Performers: Bill Solomon, Joe Moffett, Jonathan Finlayson, Aaron Meicht, Chris DiMeglio, Blair Hamrick, Matthew Jaimes, Will Lang, Jen Baker
River Rhyme reading list -
Cioc, Mark. The Rhine, An Eco-Biography, 1815-2000. University of Washington Press, Seattle, 2002.
Eiseley, Loren. The Immense Journey. Random House, New York, 1957.
Lapham, Lewis H. (Ed.). (2018). Water. [Special Issue]. Lapham’s Quarterly, 11(3).
Macfarlane, Robert. Is A River Alive?. W.W. Norton & Company, New York, 2025.
Morris, James D.K., and Jacinta Rur, ‘Giving Voice to Rivers: Legal Personality as a Vehicle for Recognising Indigenous Peoples’ Relationships to Water?’, Australian Indigenous Law Review, 14:2 (2010), 49-62.
Mujila, Fiston Mwanza. The River in the Belly. Deep Vellum, Dallas, 2021.
Po, Li and Tu Fu. Poems. Translated by Arthur Cooper. Penguin Books, New York, 1973.
Scott, James C. In Praise of Floods, The Untamed River and the Life it Brings. Yale University Press, New Haven, 2025.
Twain, Mark. Life on the Mississippi. Osgood & Co., Boston, 1883.
Way, Thaïsa, Editor. River Cities, City Rivers. Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, D.C., 2018.
River Rhyme is presented with the Riverside Park Conservancy. River Rhyme is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.
River Rhyme logo created and designed by Shu Tu.
