The Concert in Central Park is the first live album by American folk rock duo Simon & Garfunkel, released on February 16, 1982, by Warner Bros. Records.

It was recorded on September 19, 1981, at a free benefit concert on the Great Lawn in Central Park, New York City, where the pair performed in front of 500,000 people.

Television channel HBO agreed to carry the concert, and they worked with Delsener to decide on Simon and Garfunkel as the appropriate act for this event.

Ongoing personal tensions between the duo led them to decide against a permanent reunion, despite the success of the concert and a subsequent world tour.

[7] In the early 1980s, Parks Commissioner Gordon Davis, responsible for New York City's green areas, and Ron Delsener, one of the city's most influential concert promoters, developed the idea of helping Central Park financially with a free open-air concert, under the legal guidance of Bob Donnelly.

Davis authorized the project, and Delsener entered discussions with cable TV channel HBO to decide who would perform.

[8][9] They decided on Simon & Garfunkel, a duo that had formed in New York City in the 1960s and had been one of the most successful folk rock groups through the late 60s/early 70s.

In the following ten years, both continued musical careers as solo artists and worked together only sporadically on one-off projects.

Simon was enthusiastic about the idea, but questioned whether it could be financially successful, especially given the poor audience attendance of his last project, the autobiographical movie One-Trick Pony.

[8][14] Music critic Stephen Holden pointed out that, unlike artists who had left in pursuit of lifestyles offered by other locales, the two had always been a part of New York City.

A group of eleven musicians was assembled for the concert,[14][17] most of whom were experienced studio musicians and had played on albums involving Simon or Garfunkel and these included Billy Joel's guitarist David Brown, Muscle Shoals guitarist Pete Carr, Anthony Jackson (bass guitar), Rob Mounsey (synthesizer), John Eckert and John Gatchell (trumpets), Dave Tofani and Gerry Niewood (saxophones), Steve Gadd and Grady Tate (drums, percussion), and Richard Tee (piano).

[17] News reports[20] and the Michael Doret-designed posters[21] of the 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.

[25] The stage backdrop depicted an urban rooftop with water tank and air outlet, symbolic of New York's skyline.

At twilight, the backing band went onstage, followed by New York's mayor, Ed Koch, who announced, "Ladies and gentlemen, Simon and Garfunkel!

Some of the audience booed at the mention of Koch but applauded as Simon continued by tongue-in-cheek thanking "the guys who are selling loose joints [for] giving the city half of their income tonight.

"The Late Great Johnny Ace" was interrupted when an audience member ran to the stage and shouted at Simon: "I need to talk to you!"

In May 1982 as a guest on Late Night with David Letterman, he explained that while it is not unusual for fans to jump onto the stage with flowers, this action was new to him, but also felt that the man simply appeared intoxicated.

[29] Lyrics referring to the New York area produced audience applause, such as Garfunkel's ode to his home city, "A Heart in New York", which describes from a New Yorker's point of view the first glimpse of the city when returning there by air:[30] New York, lookin' down on Central Park, where they say you should not wander after dark[31]Applause broke out during "The Sound of Silence", when the narrative voice refers to a large crowd of people in the dark:[32] And in the naked light I saw ten thousand people maybe more[33]After the 17th song, "The Boxer", which contained an additional stanza not included in the album version, Simon & Garfunkel thanked the audience and left the stage, but returned to deliver an encore of three songs – "Old Friends / Bookends Theme", "The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin' Groovy)", and "The Sound of Silence".

The audio tracks were processed in postproduction, but Rolling Stone magazine wrote that they were not completely polished, and preserved the roar and the fuzziness of live rock music heard through a loudspeaker.

[39] HBO televised the film, Simon and Garfunkel: The Concert in Central Park, on February 21, 1982, five days after the album was released.

[15] 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.

"[49] 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 culture and politics.

"[50] This reviewer noted that Garfunkel's voice was noticeably restrained in high passages, though still harmonious, and that the evening's only weak spot was the "Kodachrome"/"Maybellene" medley, because neither singer could raise the right level of emotion for the rock songs.

[50] A Billboard reviewer wrote in March 1982, "This 19 song, two record set gloriously recaptures the past with sterling renditions of most of the duo's classics as well as a few of Simon's solo compositions filled out by Garfunkel's harmony.

"[51] However, Robert Christgau of The Village Voice dismissed the album as "a corporate boondoggle—a classy way for Warner Bros. artist Simon to rerecord, rerelease, and resell the catalogue CBS is sitting on."

Simon said that he did not immediately realize the magnitude of the event: "I didn't get what had happened – how big it was – until I went home, turned on the television and saw it on all the news ... and later that night on the front pages of all the newspapers.

They set a release date of spring 1983 to coincide with their planned North American tour, but after increasingly acrimonious delays and disagreements, Simon told Warner Brothers he could no longer work with Garfunkel and that the project as a collaborative album was cancelled.

With donations from the general public and with the help of wealthy benefactors, the park was restored during the 1980s and gained recognition as a major tourist attraction.