Rise Up, Sing Out: A Concert for the First Amendment
About This Event
Bette Midler and Rufus Wainwright perform at Town Hall for Rise Up, Sing Out: A Concert for the First Amendment. Midler, who discussed the 30th anniversary of NYRP and her film and stage career in Jacob Bernstein’s October 26, 2025 New York Times profile, brings a long career in show business. Wainwright, a Canadian‑American singer‑songwriter and composer, moves between rock‑pop, country inflection and through‑composed stage work and favors structured phrasing with a narrator’s attention to lyric detail.
About Rise Up, Sing Out: A Concert for the First Amendment
At Town Hall, *Rise Up, Sing Out: A Concert for the First Amendment* frames rock and pop performance as a civic act, linking live music to questions of speech, protest, and public life. Rufus Wainwright leads a bill that also includes Bette Midler and Patti Smith, artists whose careers have moved between popular song and cultural commentary. In New York, where Town Hall has long hosted benefit concerts and political gatherings, the setting carries its own institutional memory. The program’s plain premise lands: the First Amendment is not abstract when voices are literal.
About the Artists
Rufus Wainwright
Rufus Wainwright is a Canadian-American singer-songwriter and composer whose work moves between rock/pop, country, and a literate singer-songwriter tradition. He records widely and also writes for the classical stage, including operas and theater music built from literary texts.
Bette Midler
Read Jacob Bernstein’s profile of Bette in the Sunday, October 26, 2025 New York Times. Bette talks about the 30th Anniversary of NYRP, movies, show business, and movies. Read the article here.
Patti Smith
Patti Smith is a singer, songwriter, poet, and author whose work emerged from New York City’s 1970s punk and downtown arts scenes. Her early recordings set spoken language against lean rock arrangements, and that approach continues to shape her concerts and readings.