Family Pride, free live music, the Maker Faire, and more this weekend

Oh, hey, Philly summer. We weren’t sure you were coming this year.

Get this June weekend started on Thursday or Friday night, with free outdoor performances of REV’s Retro Summer Show from Rev Theatre Company. REV’s recent contributions to the scene include high-energy Shakespeare in South Philly’s Columbus Square and an original graveyard cabaret at Laurel Hill Cemetery that’s become a Fringe Festival favorite. This year, REV brings a 1940s cabaret to Philly parks.

With four singers, it’s “a heady hit parade of retro musical nostalgia,” inspired by the stylings of Bing Crosby, the Andrews Sisters, and many more. Catch the show Thursday night at Bardascino Park (10th and Carpenter), or Friday night at Dickinson Square Park (4th and Tasker). The show returns next week, on Wednesday, June 27 at Hawthorne Park (12th and Catherine). All performances are at 7pm.

Family Pride and Juneteenth

Up in the Northwest, Mount Airy Art Garage partners with the Mayor’s Office of LGBTQ Affairs and Philadelphia Family Pride for the first-ever Philly Family Pride Picnic & Arts Festival. It’s coming up on Saturday from 11am to 5pm (rain date Saturday, June 30) at the newly renovated Lovett Library Park in Mount Airy (6945 Germantown Avenue). It’s free and open to all, with family-friendly live entertainment (including jugglers and Anna Crusis Women’s Choir), a local arts-and-crafts market, food trucks, and resource tables from organizations supporting LGBTQ parents and youth.

Juneteenth celebrations continue this weekend as well, with the third annual Philadelphia Juneteenth Musicfest and Parade, featuring more than 3,000 marchers (including drill teams and marching bands) and 18 floats. It starts from 15th and JFK at noon and heads to Penn’s Landing for an afternoon festival.

Meet our organ

In Center City, the Kimmel presents its 8th Annual Organ Day on Saturday from 11am to 5pm, in partnership with the Philly chapter of the American Guild of Organists. It’s a marathon of music from the largest mechanical pipe organ of any concert venue in America. Program highlights include Peter and the Wolf, world-class soloists, opera selections, and performances by the Pennsylvania Ballet, plus an invitation to experience the organ by lying down on the stage. Here’s the full lineup. It’s a free, non-ticketed day, so come and go as you please.

The world’s new workshop

On Sunday, the next generation of local artists and makers converge on the Pennovation Center (3401 Grays Ferry Avenue) for the Philadelphia Mini Maker Faire, a volunteer-organized, family-centric event for DIY science (including robots), arts and crafts, music, and lots of activities. The Faire honors Philly’s “Workshop of the World” past with a 21st-century twist. The original Maker Faire launched in 2006 in the San Francisco Bay Area, spread all over the world, and now lands in Philly for the first time. It’s happening from 10am to 6pm and advance tickets are $15 ($7.50 for youth ages 5 to 7; free for kids 4 and under).

Into the Woods, and then Grays Ferry

If you’re feeling an art show, Da Vinci Art Alliance (DVAA) hosts Into the Woods We Go, organized by Casa de Duende and juried by Thom Duffy. The show was an open call to LGBTQ artists and other queer and gender-nonbinary people “to interpret the meaning of the woods and its importance to the formation of queer self-identities.” As DVAA puts it, the woods symbolize “the marginal, the dark, the wild, the secretive, the sexual, and the magical” — resonant themes for queer-identified communities. Participating artists explore the “historical importance the woods have played in the development of queer religion, myth, sexuality, folklore, and art.” The exhibition runs through July 1, with an artist reception on Sunday from 2-5pm.

For music on Sunday evening, head to Grays Ferry for a free show from singer-songwriter Ashley Phillips, part of the SOSNA (South of South Neighborhood Association) Triangles Summer Concert Series, in partnership with Intercultural Journeys. The show runs from 5 to 7pm, at Grays Ferry and South 23rd Street. There’ll be soft-serve ice cream and food trucks on hand. (Catch a preview of Phillips’s irresistible voice here.)