Celebrates 50th Season with Connecticut Ballet Under the Starts July 5
World Fest 2025 is our fiftieth season, featuring an exceptional diversity of programming!
Created in 1976 to bring people to the beautifully renovated Untermyer Park, the Untermyer Performing Arts Council (UPAC) was formed when the Yonkers Board of Parks, Recreation and Conservation appointed thirty-one Yonkers residents and tasked them with organizing free performances to bring people to Untermyer Park. Our first members were as varied as Yonkers Day Care Center President Ann Kinnally, Herald Statesman columnist Eileen Campion, former Miss Westchester Loretta Zambito, State Garden Club’s Bertha Glaeser, Yonkers Jay-N-Cees President Mary Hoar and Youth Theater Interactions’ Kwame Johnson.
The Untermyer Performing Arts Council was created by Yonkers people for Yonkers people. To this day, fifty seasons later, we still are operated by an all-volunteer Board of Directors, all unpaid volunteers. UPAC’s passionate commitment to the arts, to volunteer excellence and service to the people of Yonkers is unmatched!
Our premiere performance on August 14th, 1976, featured award-winning entertainment. This twilight concert featured flutist Mary Ellen Shepley, soprano Francine DeLuca, violin and cello duo Carol Shive and Nan Welsh, Westchester Mandolin Orchestra conducted by Lawrence Rizzoli, and a special “surprise” to all of us, a streaker! A celebratory champagne reception at the Hudson River Chateau followed our premier. Funds raised by this reception helped us to bring Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream to our amphitheater a month later, a week after our very successful Antiques and Arts & Crafts Festival. Exhibitors from several states to sell wares as varied as silverware, macrame, antique jewelry and paintings in beautiful Untermyer Park. The following weekend we sponsored the “Spirit of ’76 Art Show” at Lincoln Park; the following two weekends, we moved it to Untermyer Park, where we enhanced the experience with music.
We continue our tradition of top notch, professional performances every summer Saturday evening under the stars at our beautiful Untermyer Park. Each year, we strive to present a varied series of events, programs geared to reflect the wonderful diversity that is Yonkers, and each year our season excels the past, while we learn about each amazing culture we feature.
Some of the many highlights for World Fest 2025:
Our premiere performance is Ballet Under the Stars 2025, performed by UPAC audience favorite Connecticut Ballet. These top dance professionals have performed more often at Untermyer Park than any other company in park history, back by audience demand.
Back to the Garden 1969, America’s leading Woodstock Tribute Band, returns to Untermyer Park, to bring us back to celebrate America’s Summer of Love!
Which Witch? Performed by the amazing Library Jazz Band, the band takes on Wicked, The Wiz and The Wizard of Oz.
Yonkers: World War II American Heritage City will celebrate Yonkers’ designation as New York State’s World War II American Heritage City, selected because of the outstanding contributions Yonkers made to the war effort. Yonkers was represented by five World War II Generals, an Admiral, three Tuskegee Airmen, thousands of trained airplane mechanics, the designer and City Manager of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, twenty thousand men and women who volunteered to defend our country, and more than twenty thousand volunteers of all ages who performed every task needed to “bring our boys home.”
One of Yonkers most important contributions, a top secret operation that wasn’t revealed until several years after the war, was production of cable for Operation Overlord. Many historians credit this operation for the Allied success on D Day.
UPAC’s Celebrating the Americans with Disabilities Act commemorates the 35th Anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act on July 26th, featuring a presentation by Carole Conklin, Chair of the Mayor’s Disabilities Advisory Board, and the outstanding Peace of Heart, an exceptional choral group open to all, abled and disabled.
At UPAC, we take pride in executing our mission of community service through developing and promoting an appreciation of the performing arts, providing a summer series of varied, quality artistic performances, and year-round special events for adults and children at beautiful Untermyer Park.
This definitely will be another “don’t miss” Untermyer Performing Arts Council World Fest 2025 evening under the stars!
For more information, call the UPAC Artsline at 914-375-3435, visit our website at www.untermyerperformingarts.org, or email us at untermyer@outlook.com.
The Untermyer Performing Arts Council is an all-volunteer organization dedicated to continuing the tradition of Minnie and Samuel Untermyer, bringing free entertainment to our treasure of a park and the people of Yonkers.
Our events are admission free and open to the public. Audience members must bring lawn chairs or picnic blankets; we cannot provide seating.
This program, done in cooperation with Mayor Mike Spano and the Yonkers Department of Parks, Recreation and Conservation, is made possible by ArtsWestchester with support from Westchester County Government and the City of Yonkers. Senator Andrea Stewart Cousins, Assemblymember Nader Sayegh, Empire City Casino, and our many generous supporters provide additional funding for our programs.
For further information, please call the Untermyer Performing Arts Council at 914-375-3435. For updates, visit our website at www.untermyerperformingarts.org, Twitter @UntermyerPAC, Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/upac1976/, LinkedIn, Instagram and Pinterest.
