LIC's Culture Lab Gears Up For Another Summer Of Outdoor Concerts

LONG ISLAND CITY, QUEENS — The weather is warming up, and the Long Island City waterfront will soon echo again with live music and smell of fresh-cooked food and on-tap beer, thanks to the return of Culture Lab's outdoor concert series.

The popular, free program will be back for a new season starting Saturday, April 30, based out of the Plaxall Gallery parking lot on the corner of 46th Avenue and Fifth Street, next to Gantry Plaza State Park.

Festivities will kick off with a 5 p.m. performance by Affinity — a music collective that blends funk, jazz and soul. It will be followed by Tilted Axes, a post-rock group, at 7 p.m., closing out with a 7:30 p.m. show by Vin Scialla and the Brooklyn Raga Massive, a jazz and raga-fusion ensemble.

Meanwhile, between 5-9 p.m., Plaxall's indoor gallery space will play host to the Queens Fine Art Spring Affair by Long Island City Artists, featuring a wide range of works from more than 180 local artists.

Culture Lab's free weekly concert series will continue on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays through Nov. 4. — plus Thursday shows starting in June. Besides the music, an on-site food truck dishes out tasty grub, and visitors can grab beers on draft from Rockaway Brewing Company and other local brewers to sip during the show.

Culture Lab's organizers have already released their May concert lineup, which includes a May 6 performance by The Black Soul Experience, a May 13 show by the "hippie-redneck" group Bootheel Boss Gobblers, a May 14 concert by jazz and classical artist Hyuna Park, plus nearly two dozen others.

Learn more about the series on Culture Lab LIC's website.