Rise Up, Sing Out: A Concert for the First Amendment New York Performances

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.