It\u2019s all happening this month: a Halloween-themed cover-band blowout, a citywide birthday bash for one of the great American composers, a festival spotlighting Arabic artists and yes, the Strokes, a quarter-century on from their emergence as NYC\u2019s greatest rock hope.<\/p>\n
Read on for our picks for the best live local music October has to offer.<\/p>\n
Robtober and Ron-tober<\/p>\n
Blue Note, Oct. 1-Nov. 1<\/a> and Birdland, Oct. 7-31<\/a><\/p>\n Savvy local jazz fans know that October signals the arrival of a pair of similarly named monthlong residencies featuring major names in the genre born more than 40 years apart. For his residency at the Blue Note, Robert Glasper, arguably the contemporary musician most responsible for building bridges between jazz and the broader world of hip-hop and R&B, mines his golden Rolodex, presenting collaborations with Wyclef Jean, Questlove, and singer-songwriters Lalah Hathaway and Kem. Meanwhile, at Birdland, Ron Carter, the eminent bassist who has worked with everyone from Miles Davis to A Tribe Called Quest across his glorious six-decade-plus career, settles in for Ron-tober, featuring stints by two of his small combos, his Great Big Band and his duo with outside-the-box guitar genius Bill Frisell.<\/p>\n Strokes + Beach House + TV on the Radio + Fcukers<\/p>\n Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, Oct. 2<\/a><\/p>\n Having recently celebrated the 25th anniversary of their game-changing debut, “Is This It,” the Strokes could have easily spent 2026 reveling in nostalgia. Instead, they\u2019re touring behind “Reality Awaits,” their resolutely weird seventh LP, filled with languid tempos and gratuitous Auto-Tune. Still, we\u2019d be surprised if they don\u2019t mix a good amount of early-aughts bangers into the set list for this splashy hometown gig alongside their illustrious Y2K-era art-rock contemporaries TV on the Radio, beloved Baltimore dream-pop vibesmiths Beach House, and Fcukers, a young NYC duo who channel the dancefloor-geared insouciance of early-2000s electroclash.<\/p>\n Steve Reich at 90<\/p>\n Various venues and dates<\/a><\/p>\n Few contemporary classical works could rightly be considered hits, but “Music for 18 Musicians” is the rare exception. Steve Reich\u2019s minimalist masterpiece is a perennial crowd-pleaser, and for good reason: Its pulsing, interlocking patterns stimulate the brain while landing easily on the ear. A staged 50th anniversary revival of that work at the Park Avenue Armory (Oct. 14-18) is just one of a slew of gigs commemorating Reich\u2019s 90th birthday this month. Elsewhere, you can hear Bryce Dessner of the National take a crack at multilayered guitar classic “Electric Counterpoint” as part of an all-star showcase of new and old pieces at Carnegie Hall (Oct. 22); S\u014d Percussion tackling the iconic “Drumming” at the 92nd Street Y (Oct. 28); and a career-spanning survey of vocal works at Trinity Church (Oct. 7).<\/p>\n Habibi Festival<\/p>\n Joe\u2019s Pub; Oct. 8-11<\/a><\/p>\n Launched in 2021, the Habibi Festival showcases what it terms the \u201ccomplexity, vitality, and beauty of music from the Arab world\u201d and SWANA region (Southwest Asia and North Africa). As demonstrated by the lineup of this year\u2019s sixth annual installment, that could mean a bunch of different things, from jazz informed by Arabic maq\u0101m music, to neosoul and hip-hop, a new spin on Arabic classical music or Judeo-Arabic cabaret. Each of these gigs promises to bring deep heritage to life.<\/p>\n June McDoom<\/p>\n National Sawdust, Oct. 17<\/a><\/p>\n June McDoom draws on a broad constellation of influences: Simon & Garfunkel; her grandfather Colin Smith, who specializes in the Jamaican folk style of mento; her time studying jazz vocals at the New School. The mix gives her own work an uncommonly artful quality, in league with first-rate contemporary singer-songwriters like Mitski. This month, she\u2019ll release “Follow the Light,” her debut album and first release via Jagjaguwar, the influential indie imprint that helped break modern indie standouts such as Bon Iver, Angel Olsen and Sharon Van Etten. People will be talking about this record; see her in the relatively intimate confines of National Sawdust while you still can.<\/p>\n Unsound New York<\/p>\n Lincoln Center, Oct. 21-23<\/a><\/p>\n The stateside sister to a long-running experimental-music fest in Krakow, Poland, Unsound New York is the kind of description-defying showcase where it\u2019s probably best just to dive in rather than try to decipher too much ahead of time. We\u2019re especially intrigued by the collaborations and happenings going down this month at various Lincoln Center venues, including the team-ups of self-proclaimed \u201cemo ambient\u201d luminary claire rousay and Polish composer Martyna Basta (Oct. 22nd at the Atrium at Lincoln Center), and mind-bending vocalists and sound artists FUJIIIIIIIIIIITA and Ka Baird (Oct. 21 at Alice Tully Hall), as well as a large-scale orchestral work by another Polish composer, Hania Rani (Oct. 23 at Geffen Hall).<\/p>\n Gutterween<\/p>\n