(Updated at 2:15 p.m.) The Fashion Centre at Pentagon City mall and Shake Shack will host live music performances outside the restaurant from 7-9 p.m. every Thursday in June.

Events in the series, called “Shack Sounds,” are free and open to the public near the mall’s S. Hayes Street entrance.

“Shoppers are invited to enjoy burgers, beats and brews while shopping to the soundtrack of summer,” said a press release.

The full concert schedule is below.

• June 7 — David Thong Band (Pop/Rock/Hip-hop/Acoustic)
• June 14 — The Ryan Forrester Band (Motown/Top 40/Country/Rock)
• June 21 — Chris Timbers Band (Singer/Songwriter)
• June 28 — Most Savage Gentlemen (Covers/Originals)

Shack Sounds series have previously taken place in such locations as Austin, Texas and Lexington, Kentucky.

Market Common Clarendon is hosting a free concert series called “Rock the Loop” from May through July.

The concerts are held from 6:30-8:30 p.m. every Thursday at “The Loop” in the shopping center.

Here’s the full concert schedule below:

• May 17 – Gary Smallwood (Classic Rock/Blues)
• May 24 – Shane Gamble (Country Rock)
• May 31 – Driven to Clarity (Acoustic Covers)
• June 7 –  Hand Painted Swinger (Pop Rock)
• June 14 – Chris Bruno (Popular Covers)
• June 21 – Yellow Tie Guy (Rock/Alternative/Folk)
• June 28 – Smokin’ Lounge (Pop/Rock/Jazz)
• July 5 – Brian Weber (Rock/Blues/Folk)
• July 12 – Elizabeth, Phil & Chris (Rock/Latin/Go-go)
• July 19 – Nina Casey Trio (Acoustic Blues/Swing)
• July 26 – Phil Kominski (Acoustic/Folk)

Market Common Clarendon is also offering free concerts for kids each Friday through August, starting at 10:30 a.m. each day.

Photo via Facebook

Central Place Plaza in Rosslyn will be alive with holiday cheer tomorrow (Thursday) for the Rosslyn Carols! Holiday Concert.

Hosted by the Rosslyn Business Improvement District for the first time at the public plaza at 1800 N. Lynn Street, the event will include a lunchtime concert, then in the evening a DJ, games and food and drink.

A choir from H-B Woodlawn will lead the singing of Christmas carols from 6:15 p.m., then local band The Woodshedders will play a live concert from 7 p.m.

And throughout the day, attendees can have free photographs taken in a life-size snow globe.

The full list of festivities on offer is below:

• Noon-10 p.m.: Free photo-ops in the life-size snow globe.
• Noon-2 p.m.: Holiday lunchtime concert.
• 4:30 p.m.: Festivities start on the plaza with a DJ, holiday games, drinks and food for purchase.
• 6:15 p.m.: Holiday caroling from H-B Woodlawn
• 7:00 p.m.: Live concert featuring The Woodshedders

Central Place Plaza (1800 N. Lynn Street) in Rosslyn will host a harvest festival next month during Halloween weekend, the neighborhood’s first.

On Friday, October 27 from 4-10 p.m. and Saturday, October 28 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., more than 20 vendors will sell various crafts and gifts, while there will be live entertainment and activities including a pie eating contest, cornhole, a pumpkin toss, costumes contests for children and pets.

The event is part of a series of autumnal happenings in Rosslyn.

The neighborhood’s Business Improvement District is hosting Cinema & Pub in the Park at Gateway Park (1300 Lee Highway) tonight — extending its summer film festival into September.

From 6-11 p.m. for the next three Fridays, beer, wine and sangria will be on offer, with food available from on-site food trucks. September 22 will be a family night, with activities beginning at 5 p.m.

The movie schedule is as follows:

• September 15: “Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy”
• September 22: “Lego Batman”
• September 29: “Golden Eye”

On Tuesdays beginning September 19, Gateway Park will host Yoga in the Park, a yoga class for all experience levels from 6-7:30 p.m. The entire session of five classes costs $20 per person, and attendees should bring a yoga mat.

And on Thursday evenings from 6-8 p.m. starting September 21, Gateway Park will host Bonfire Concerts around its bonfire pit. Seasonal beers, ciders and wines will be available for purchase, with a different fashion truck on site each week as well as donuts from Mama’s Donut Bites and s’mores from Capital Candy Jar.

The following acts will perform:

• September 21: Trailer Grass Orchestra
• September 28 Scott Kurt & Memphis 59
• October 5: Moose Jaw
• October 12: Justin Trawick and The Common Good

Photos via Rosslyn BID.

Several thousand people are expected to descend on Rosslyn’s Gateway Park on Saturday, September 9 for this year’s Rosslyn Jazz Fest.

The free event at the park at 1300 Lee Highway regularly draws more than 5,000 people for jazz music, local food trucks and a beer and wine garden from 1-7 p.m.

This year’s lineup, with timings, is as follows:

• 1 p.m. –  Joe Keyes & The Late Bloomer Band 
• 2:20 p.m. –  Xenia Rubinos
• 3:45 p.m. – Lee Fields & The Expressions
• 5:30 p.m. – The Soul Rebels

Food trucks Tacos Matadores, Rocklands BBQ, Mangia Tutti, Chix N Stix, Tapas Truck, Bon Bonni and Healthy Food Fool will be on site.

And for the second year, the Rosslyn Business Improvement District is partnering with neighborhood restaurants to offer discounts at to those attending this event. Customers must mention the code “Rosslyn Retail” at participating restaurants and receive 15 percent off their bill all day long.

The offer is available at Barley Mac, Bistro 360, Heavy Seas Alehouse, Kona Grill, Pancho Villa, Piola, Ben’s Chili Bowl, cityhouse, Key Bridge Terrace, Jimmy John’s, Continental Pool Lounge and The Perfect Pita.

Organizers said parking nearby will be limited. Public parking is available on N. Moore Street between 19th Street N. and Lee Highway for a $5 flat fee, while parking around Rosslyn will likely be limited too. Instead, organizers said they “strongly encourage” attendees to take Metro or bike to the festival, with the park a few blocks away from the Rosslyn Metro station.

Photos via Rosslyn BID.

Those near Joint Base Fort Myer-Henderson Hall next weekend can expect to hear live cannon fire during the U.S. Army Band’s annual 1812 Overture summer concert.

The free concert is scheduled for 8 p.m. on Saturday, August 19 at Summerall Field (247 Sheridan Ave) on the base. If it rains, it will be moved to across the street to Conmy Hall (239 Sheridan Ave).

The U.S. Army Concert Band, the U.S. Army Herald Trumpets, the U.S. Army Chorus and the U.S. Army Voices ensembles will all perform. The program will include selections of classical, popular, and patriotic music.

The climax of the evening will be live cannon fire provided by the Presidential Salute Battery of the 3rd Infantry Regiment (The Old Guard) during a playing of Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture.

Advance tickets are not required, and bleacher seating is available on a first-come, first-served basis. Food is allowed but alcohol, glass containers and coolers are not. All bags will be searched.

Cars and pedestrians can enter the base through the Hatfield Gate (off Washington Blvd and 2nd Street S.). The Henry Gate (off Arlington Blvd) will be open for pedestrians only from 6-10:30 p.m., while cyclists can enter at either gate. Valid photo ID is required for attendees aged 18 or over.

Photo via Facebook

The lineup is set for the 27th annual Rosslyn Jazz Fest.

The free event is scheduled for Saturday, September 9 in Gateway Park (1300 Lee Highway). It regularly draws over 5,000 music fans to the park for world-class jazz music along with local food trucks and a beer and wine garden.

The lineup this year consists of four different music groups:

• The Soul Rebels, a brass ensemble from New Orleans.
• Lee Fields & The Expressions, an old-school soul group that has been recording music since the 1960s.
• Xenia Rubinos, an Afro-Latina singer/songwriter that takes influence from hip-hop and Caribbean soul music.
• Joe Keyes & The Late Bloomer Band, a jazz/funk group from Baltimore influenced by artists such as Sun Ra and Miles Davis.

New this year, a Spotify playlist is available to listen to the artists’ work before the festival. Timings will be set at a later date. The event is presented by the Rosslyn Business Improvement District and Arlington Arts.

A new free rock concert series will kick off next week at Rosslyn’s Central Place Plaza.

The Rosslyn Rocks! Concerts are scheduled to take place each Thursday in June from 6-8 p.m. at the plaza on N. Lynn Street. Each week, a new cover band will entertain concertgoers.

Attendees can also enjoy a drink in the neighborhood’s newest outdoor space, with proceeds from sales going to the Arlington Street People’s Assistance Network.

The schedule for the month-long concert series is below.

• June 1: White Ford Bronco
• June 8: Lloyd Dobler Effect
• June 15: The 19th Street Band
• June 22: Jeff from Accounting
• June 29: The Monster Band

The public plaza already hosts the newly-opened Rosslyn farmers market and is adjacent to a 31-story mixed-use building that includes apartments and retail, including a new McDonald’s.

The following is the third in a weekly series of articles about a “day in the life” of companies at the MakeOffices coworking space in Clarendon. The mini-series, which will run this fall, is sponsored by MakeOffices.

Move over Willy Wonka, the employees at SharpSeat are now the ones offering golden tickets. Whether for concerts or sporting events or theater performances, SharpSeat hooks up secondary market buyers with their dream tickets. The service essentially “is like StubHub, but cheaper,” say co-founder Andrew McCulloch.

He and the other two co-founders, Mike Williams and Brad Kurtzman, met while attending James Madison University and moved to Northern Virginia to take jobs after graduating. They attended a lot of ticketed events upon moving to the area and found themselves giving advice to friends looking to buy good tickets, too. But there was one major problem.

“There’s a ton of fees that we got sick of paying when shopping around on other sites,” McCulloch says. “We saw an opening in the secondary ticket market.” That’s when they decided they could do it better.

The three did a lot of research on secondary market ticket sales and ended up using their industry knowledge to start SharpSeat as a side project. “We found the average person didn’t know to look any further than Stubhub for secondary [tickets]. We saw an opportunity there to give them a better alternative,” Williams says.

They all eventually left their jobs to work full-time on SharpSeat. “We basically wanted to find a way to make tickets cheaper for the end customer,” McCulloch says. “We knew if we could find a way to keep costs down and still get access to the same tickets the big guys were getting, we could pass the savings on to customers.”

Their average day is a lot different now. The employees live in Virginia Square — two live together and the other lives down the street — so the MakeOffices Clarendon location where they work makes for an easy commute.

“One of the best parts is not having the commute around D.C.,” McCulloch says. He also found it important to stop working from home every day. “Keeping work and life separate was big for me because working in my kitchen all the time I’m [distracted]… Plus, here we’re surrounded by a bunch of other entrepreneurs that are getting things done.”

Being among other entrepreneurs has helped the employees stay motivated when doing their daily tasks, which include maintaining the website, coordinating with site developers, researching what events are coming up and fielding calls from the customer service team. And according to Williams, one of the big challenges they constantly face is marketing.

“For every business, [marketing] is probably 90 percent of the battle,” he says. “Just getting the word out there and getting people to visit the site, more than just your family and friends.”

Thanks to the business’ growth since launching two years ago — there is currently about $2 billion worth of tickets listed on the site, although it fluctuates seasonally — the team recently has been able to hire out for help with that marketing burden.

“Now we’ve hired a marketing firm to help us and we’re really looking to expand,” Kurtzman says. “This is our first business so we kind of learn as we go. We had to teach ourselves everything.”

They also outsource much of the customer service to a team in Chicago, but not all of it. The co-founders all use their venue expertise to give advice to customers who contact them looking for tips on purchasing the best tickets.

“So often people ask what’s the best value and where’s the best place to sit,” says McCulloch. “We know where you’re going to get a better value… Just little intricacies like that help out when we’re talking to clients.” Williams agrees, adding, “We have good knowledge of all the D.C. venues so we help people out” with getting the best ticket for their money.

To remain experts in the industry, the three often do offsite work — attending different types of events locally as well as traveling to other cities to check out their venues. “Obviously, it’s really fun to do that, but it is a part of what we have to do [for research],” Williams says.

Kurtzman explains that traveling to sites is how they gain knowledge of the best seats so they can offer direct customer support. “StubHub doesn’t really do that kind of thing,” he says.

When the SharpSeat employees aren’t traveling, they take advantage of the amenities in the MakeOffices Clarendon coworking space.

“Getting dedicated office space around here… is pretty unrealistic, especially for a small company like us,” says Williams. “Even for something half as nice as this, if you want a dedicated space the rents around here are so much that it just never really made sense to us. When this space opened up we couldn’t believe how cheap it was for what you get.”

One of the perks included in that price is a set of rotating taps of regionally-brewed beers. The SharpSeat co-founders say they like to head to the kitchen to try out new brews, relax and meet employees from the other businesses in the coworking space.

“Plus, I love the massage chairs,” Brad says, as the others laugh. “I usually use them once a day.”

Between the MakeOffices benefits and the satisfaction of doing a job they love, the SharpSeat team experiences something many typical employees don’t: They actually enjoy going to work.

“At my old job, I hated going to work. Now I love coming to this office,” Kurtzman says. Williams agrees, saying with a smile, “It’s kind of crazy that we’re voluntarily coming into an office after we wanted so badly to get out of one.”

Fans of the Netherlands Carillon only have four more chances this year to see it in action with a carillonneur behind its keyboard.

The next free concert with the 50-bell musical instrument at 1400 N. Meade Street is scheduled for Saturday from 6 to 8 p.m., according to the National Park Service. Kipp Cortez, a Concord University music professor, is slated to perform.

The other remaining live performances are:

• Aug. 20 (6-8 p.m.) with Jesse Ratcliffe.
• Aug. 27 (6-8 p.m.) with Buck Lyon-Vaiden.
• Sept. 5 (2-4 p.m.) with Edward Nassor.

Visitors to the carillon can bring food to eat during the concerts. But picnickers should take their trash home with them.

Seating also is limited. Concertgoers are encouraged to bring blankets or folding chairs.

The concert series, which began in May, includes patriotic, jazz and pop music.

“People should come [to our summer concerts] for the view of the Washington, D.C., skyline and the chance to hear a variety of music played by the world’s leading carillonneurs,” Nassor, the Netherlands Carillon’s director, said in an interview with the Rosslyn Business Improvement District.

Flickr pool photo by Joseph Gruber