[UPDATE] Friday night, the Essence Music Festival opens in the Louisiana Superdome. Janet Jackson in her only performance of the year, Alicia Keys and Mary J. Blige will headline the main stage each night, and that stage is an unusual construction by production designer Stefan Beese of RE:BE Design that is pretty dramatic when seen in action. Here’s a preview:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_OiInZjVMl8[/youtube]

For schedules and more, check our Essence Fest page. And iPhone users can easily access the full music and seminar schedules for each day of the festival right from our free iPhone app.

Update July 2, 11:39 a.m.

This post was revised to give credit to production designer Stefan Beese.