John Cale, one of the true OGs of the international art rock underground, gave a masterclass in performance and reinvention before a packed house at BRIC Celebrate Brooklyn! Festival in Prospect Park on August 19.

At 81, Cale is still a striking and potent musical force, a true creator who is forever seeking new artistic horizons. He’s a man whose catalog has spanned everything from the proto-punk of the Velvet Underground to classical minimalism, gorgeous orch-pop balladry, the fiercest (and drunkenly deranged) hard rock rants to, on his first new studio album in a decade Mercy, shades of beat-driven hallucinatory electronica and experimental pop. This new collection finds the adventurous Welshman in the company of youthful collaborators like Weyes Blood, Laurel Halo, Sylvan Esso and Actress.

Belying his age, Cale was a most commanding force on stage – in fine voice, a sharp black Italian suit and dramatically spikey white hair, playing both keys and guitar for a 14-song, career-spanning set.

In a nod to his new album, many of the songs were kicked off with a rhythm machine like “Moonstruck (Nico’s Song),” his tribute to the Velvet Underground chanteuse whose best solo albums, like 1968’s The Marble Index, Cale produced. Another standout from the new album is “Night Crawling,” the first single which recalls his adventures with pal David Bowie in the New York City downtown of the 1970s.

Two of the most interesting and atmospheric numbers were “Rose Garden of Future Sores” and “Half Past France.” Both featured orchestral backgrounds, disorienting chords and spacey electronic effects. The latter was a 180-degree spins on one of the serene ballads from Cale’s acclaimed 1973 orch-pop masterpiece, Paris 1919. Its calm was transformed into a sinister ambient Krautrock noise nightmare. Its queasy string drone foundation was punctuated with bowed electric bass and an eerily harmonizer-effected vocal on the outro line: “We’re so far away, floating into space.” The same sonics were present for his funereal take on Elvis’ “Heartbreak Hotel,” a highlight from his 1975 album, Slow Dazzle.

Sonic dread never sounded so good.

Cale picked up the guitar and rocked strong and hard on old favorites like “Guts,” “Helen of Troy” and “Cable Hogue.” He returned to the keys to revisit a Velvet Underground staple to the delight of the crowd, Lou Reed’s junkie opus, “I’m Waiting for the Man.” Here, he perhaps deferred to the P.C. police by injecting the line “Hey buddy” for Lou’s “Hey White Boy.”

Another fantastic rearrangement was in store with another Paris 1919 ballad, “Hanky Panky Nohow.” Cale and his wonderfully tasty three-piece backing band made this already gorgeous song even more beautiful and relaxed – with a rhythm machine underpinning, a glacial pacing and an added sample of an operatic soprano female soloing on the song’s long coda. This and all tracks performed were complemented with video projections that made their atmospheric sounds even more so.

Cale’s set concluded with a raucous version of “Barracuda,” another punchy rocker from his album Fear featuring some very fine psychobilly guitar soloing.

The surprise of the evening was the set by the show opener Tomberlin, the nom de sound of contemporary folk artist/singer-songwriter Sarah Beth Tomberlin.

Now living and working out of Brooklyn, this Kentucky-born performer played a well-paced set of gentle tunes from her two Saddle Creek Records’ albums, the most recent of which, 2022’s I Don’t Know Who Needs to Hear This…, was recorded a few blocks away from Prospect Park at Figure 8 Studios.

Tomberlin is a confident performer with the kind of droll between song banter that easily won over the crowd, one that was surely there, in very large part, to catch a glimpse of Cale.

The most striking element is her voice. It has both a breathy quality that reminds me of another buzzworthy young performer, Snail Mail, and all power and range needed to bring across one of her dramatic lyrical twists. Her three-piece backing band provided sensitive accompaniment to all her songs, many that we’re mere whisps. Airy Frisell-like guitaring, lots of shimmering brush work on the drums and lush yet minimalist keys perfectly adorned her intimate story songs and their poetic lyrical turns.

Standout tracks in her set were the evocative “Sunstruck,” “Stoned,” “Memory” and the set closer, the sprawling psychedelic “Happy Accident.”