Sunday, Sorted: Latin Jazz at the Brooklyn Museum

Sunday, Sorted: Latin Jazz at the Brooklyn Museum

Some Sundays need a plan. This one comes with one built in.

On August 23, the Brooklyn Museum's Summer Jazz series welcomes the Chembo Corniel Quintet, led by Grammy-nominated percussionist Wilson "Chembo" Corniel, for a free performance in the museum lobby. Doors open at 2 PM, the music runs until 4, and the price of admission is showing up.

Corniel's reputation precedes him. A percussionist steeped in Afro-Cuban tradition and decades of New York bandstands, he leads a quintet built for exactly this kind of afternoon — warm, rhythmic, unhurried. The Brooklyn Museum's soaring lobby has a way of turning a jazz set into something closer to ceremony, acoustics bouncing off stone and glass while the crowd drifts between standing and sitting, listening and wandering.

Museum. Jazz. Then dinner somewhere around Prospect Heights or Crown Heights. There. We just planned your Sunday.

That is really the whole idea. Arrive early enough to catch a wing of the collection before the music starts, or let the quintet be the reason you finally walk through those doors. Either way, by 4 PM you will have had culture, rhythm, and an afternoon that felt bigger than a Sunday usually does.

What happens next is up to you, but we have a suggestion: let the evening drift toward Prospect Heights or Crown Heights, where a slow dinner is the natural coda to an afternoon of live percussion. No reservation required for the music — just the willingness to be somewhere good at 2 PM.

The details

• What: Chembo Corniel Quintet, part of the Brooklyn Museum's Summer Jazz series
• When: Sunday, August 23, 2–4 PM
• Where: Brooklyn Museum lobby
• Cost: Free and open to the public

This is the kind of afternoon that does not ask much of you and gives back plenty — a little art, a little rhythm, and a reason to stay in Brooklyn until the sun starts to lean toward evening.