The Concert in Central Park show named the musicians individually and did not bill them as "Simon & Garfunkel"; that the two singers would perform together on stage in a reunion was not officially announced until only a week before the concert when it was published in New York newspapers. The two stated in interviews that further collaboration was not planned. The concert took place on Saturday, September 19, 1981, on the Great Lawn, the central open space of Central Park. The first spectators, many carrying chairs or picnic blankets, arrived at daybreak to secure a good spot. The Parks Department originally expected about 300,000
The Concert in Central Park the backing band was "one of the finest groups of musicians ever to play together at a New York rock concert", and the rearrangements of Simon's solo material were improvements over the originals. Despite the risks in performing so many acoustic ballads in an open-air concert on a cool night, the songs "were beautifully articulated, in near-perfect harmony." An October 1981 review in "Rolling Stone" called the concert "one of the finest performances of [1981]", one that "vividly recaptured another time, an era when well-crafted, melodic pop bore meanings that stretched beyond the musical sphere and into the realms of