Make Music NY Envelops NYC on Monday, 6/21

June 18th, 2010 by David Weiss

The first day of summer is a very musical one in our great city, thanks to the Make Music New York festival, which is returning for its fourth year of free concerts in public spaces throughout New York City. Players of all ages and musical genres, including Hip-hop, opera, Latin jazz, punk rock and beyond, will perform on streets, sidewalks, stoops, plazas, parks and gardens.

Highlights of this year’s line up include a Central Park celebration of visionary Greek composer Iannis Xenakis; the Corporate Challenge: guitar-slinging office workers from midtown Manhattan’s mightiest companies rock for glory in a battle of the corporate bands; A New Orleans-style “second line” jazz parade, featuring musicians from the Jazz Gallery, Jazzmobile, and other leading institutions, will wind its way from Soho to Lincoln Square up to Harlem; and Punk Island returns on Sunday, June 20, with more than 100 of the city’s loudest bands, playing on Governors Island
where there are no decibel restrictions (bring your earplugs!).

Also on the schedule this year will be a Funkfest in Williamsburg; Hardcore and Ska Bands at Wolfe’s Pond Park in Staten Island; a performance by Folklore Urbano at DreamYard Art Center in the Bronx; and a variety of family music programs at the Queens Children’s Center P.S. Q023.

Founded by opera singers with a desire to lift their voices for social change, Sing for Hope http://www.singforhope.org/ mobilizes more than 600 world-class artists – from classical musicians to photographers to Broadway performers – who donate time and talent in volunteer service programs that benefit schools, hospitals and communities. Sing for Hope provides three programs: Art U! (dynamic arts and leadership education for under-resourced youth), Healing Arts (in-hospital performances and workshops that complement the healing process), and Community Arts (events that raise awareness and funds for humanitarian causes, and projects that dismantle barriers to arts accessibility).

Make Music New York was originally inspired by France’s Fête de la Musique, a celebration of music on the Summer Solstice that brings free concerts to 300 cities all day long. Last year Make Music New York presented 900 concerts with 4,000 musicians at 272 locations throughout all
five boroughs of New York City.

So if you don’t want to hear music this Monday, get out of the city! Otherwise, be prepared to jam out no matter where you go.