Make Music New York to Celebrate 10th Anniversary This Summer

Make Music New York will celebrate its 10th year with a dazzling array of more than 1,000 free concerts in outdoor public spaces across the city on Tuesday, June 21 from 10 am to 9 pm.

Make Music New York (MMNY) is the flagship event of Make Music Day, celebrated in over 38 U.S. cities, and a highlight of the international Fête de la Musique, taking place in 700 cities across 120 countries.

Unlike typical music festivals, anyone can take part in Make Music Day, and all events are free and open to the public. Every kind of musician - of all musical persuasions - will pour onto streets, parks, plazas, porches and other public spaces in cities across the country to share their music with friends, neighbors and strangers.

Over 20 Mass Appeals will take place across the city, bringing together musicians - of all levels and ages - to make music in large, single-instrument groups. Instruments with Mass Appeal events include accordions, bagpipes, double reeds, French horns, guitars, harmonicas, mandolins, percussion, pianos, recorders, stones, synthesizers, ukuleles, and voices.

The Boomwhackers Mass Appeal will take place at that evening's Staten Island Yankees game (7pm start time, Richmond County Ballpark.) Over 2,000 fans will be given Boomwhackers (pitched percussion tubes) as they enter the stadium. During the 7th inning stretch, fans will be invited to whack the tubes to Survivor's anthemic "Eye of the Tiger." Original Survivor frontman Dave Bickler will sing the classic hit from the field. After the game, instruments will be donated to local Staten Island elementary schools, in association with VH1 Save the Music.

Additional highlights of Make Music New York include:

5 - 6 am: Inside the Bird Chorus. 900 Washington Avenue, Brooklyn Botanic Garden. (Several performances throughout the day at various times + locations; details here.)
> New York City's avian life is celebrated in composer/clarinetist David Rothenberg's Inside the Bird Chorus, conceived as a dialogue between improvising musicians and native bird species of NYC. Mr. Rothenberg performs at Brooklyn Botanic Gardens, and BBG's resident bird expert will be on hand for conversation. There will be similar performances by other musicians in all five boroughs: Wave Hill (Bronx), Central Park (Manhattan), Jamaica Wildlife Refuge (Queens), Fresh Kills Park (Staten Island), all at either dawn or dusk, the prime bird call hours. NYC Audubon will offer free bird walks following select events.

Noon - 2 pm: Windchime (Mass Appeal bagpipes and low woodwinds). Court Square, Long Island City.
> Windchime is a composition and collaboration between bagpiper-composer Matthew Welch, saxophonist-composer Shelley Washington and bassoonist-composer Susanna Hancock. Windchime is an interactive musical work for a public space, intended for a large group of Highland bagpipers and bass woodwinds. The public space is mapped out in such a way that the performer saunters through various pathways, playing sounds and notes specific to each marked out location, mimicking a breeze traveling through and activating a windchime. The bright sound of the bagpipe evokes the metallic luster of metal chimes, with the low woodwinds evoking wooden chimes. As the performers travel through all locations, a sense of musical form is attained through the pathway's construction and sequence of sounds.

Noon - 12:30 pm: Boleros. Maria Hernandez Park, Bushwick, Brooklyn.
Also at 4 - 4:30 pm.
> Boleros is "a celebration and confusion" of one of the most despised and most famous pieces of 20th century music, Maurice Ravel's Bolero. The participatory aspect of Boleros on June 21st involves two performances of the piece in Maria Hernandez Park in Bushwick, one with a pick-up band of acoustic instruments, the other with a mix of electronic and acoustic instruments.

1-5:00 pm: Free Guitar Lessons. Times Square, West 42nd Street and Broadway.

> Onsite in the pedestrian plazas around Times Square, 50 guitar teachers will be available to give free 15-min lessons to anyone who is interested in playing. One of Times Square's most famous residents, The Naked Cowboy, will be among the teachers

1 - 5 pm: Music for Four Pianos (Mass Appeal grand pianos). Cornelia St., Greenwich Village.
> On four grand pianos in the middle of the street, a concert led by Karl Larson and Hitomi Honda will explore the sonic possibilities of one, two, and even four grand pianos playing together outside the Cornelia Street Café. The event features the music of Earle Brown (25 Pages and Four More), in honor of his 90th birthday year, along with works by other NYC composers including Morton Feldman (Piece for 4 Pianos), John Cage (Experiences 1 and Mysterious Adventure), Julius Eastman (Gay Guerrilla), David Lang (Orpheus Over and Under), Philip Glass (Two Pages), and a host of others.

3:30 - 4 pm: Guerrilla Fanfare with Iktus and Tilt Brass. Grand Army Plaza, Brooklyn.

Also 5 - 5:30 pm at Castle Clinton, Battery Park.
> In this world premiere work by Kevin James for 16 brass players and 4 percussionists - performed by TILT Brass and Iktus Percussion - each musician will begin playing solo, while dispersed in different parts of the city. As they play, they will walk towards a park, and will converge in synchronicity to play the piece's finale together. Guerrilla Fanfare is simultaneously being performed in NYC and at Millennium Park for Make Music Chicago.

3:30 - 4:15 pm: Shimmer (Mass Appeal cymbals). Madison Square Park.
> Shimmer is a new work for cymbals, composed by Brian Chase of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Says Chase, "The event comes at the time of the summer solstice, the moment marking the official arrival of summer in the Northern Hemisphere - what instrument better complements the form of the sun as much as the shape of a cymbal? Contained within each individual cymbal is a huge world of tones ranging from very low to very high. Exploring this 'tone world' and the sonic potential of cymbals, both individual and collective, is a primary aim of Shimmer." Bring your cymbal and come join the fun.

4 - 5:30 pm: Exquisite Corpses. First Shearith Israel Graveyard, 55 - 57 St James Pl, Lower Manhattan.
> This year MMNY brings back this musical game based on a Surrealist concept at the First Shearith Israel Graveyard - the oldest cemetery from the earliest Jewish congregation in North America, and the only surviving 17th-century structure in Manhattan. Jeremiah Lockwood (grandson of cantorial legend Rabbi Jacob Konigsberg, and himself a virtuosic musical iconoclast) will host a gathering at the cemetery, directing participants in a series of improvised duets. Anyone can take part, either by RSVPing to reserve a spot, or showing up on June 21st between 4pm and 5:30pm and stepping in.

5 - 9 pm: Glass on Water. Pier i, West 70th St. and Riverside Drive.
> Two complete performances of Philip Glass' Piano Etudes. The composer himself will play an etude as part of the first performance. The other 40 performers are all students under the age of eighteen, from public and private schools around NYC. Seven-foot Yamaha piano being provided by Piano Piano.

5 - 5:30 pm: Concerto for Buildings. Greene St. between Broome and Grand, Manhattan.
> For the second year, MMNY is expanding Daniel Goode's Soho Gamelan Walk concept by shutting down a street in Soho with eight musical buildings, bringing in Mantra Percussion as soloists, and inviting composers to write short pieces for buildings and ensemble, each under 5 minutes. Together these will form a second, brand-new Concerto for Buildings. This year's composers are Angélica Negrón, Brooks Frederickson, and Kevin Moran. Angélica's piece is called There and Not Here. Brooks' piece is called Bull Float. Mantra Youth Percussion, along with other young musicians, will form the "back-up band."

5 - 6:30 pm: Sousapalooza. Bryant Park

> In its second year, "Sousapalooza" is a massive brassy tribute to the March King in Bryant Park. More than 150 wind band musicians will be running through all of the best loved marches and fanfares by John Philip Sousa and his contemporaries, including the Liberty Bell March, El Capitan, and Stars & Stripes Forever, led by conductor Jeff W. Ball of the Brooklyn Wind Symphony.

6 - 7 pm: New York Songs. National September 11 Memorial and Museum, World Trade Center Plaza.
> The songs that made New York famous (or vice versa) get a new twist at the WTC Memorial Plaza as PUBLIQuartet performs a set of classic New York Songs, arranged by nine talented high school composers. Selections such as New York, New York, Empire State of Mind, and other favorites will be played in stunning new arrangements. The composers: Sofia Belimova, Austin Celestin, Michelle David, Emily Delia, Zachary Detrick, Aria Hadji, Joseph Jordan, Jonah Murphy, Henry Nelson.

6:30 - 7 pm: Here (Mass Appeal music boxes). Transmitter Park, Greenpoint, Brooklyn.
> Inspired by microscopic images of sand and distant childhood memories, Here is a new piece by composer Angélica Negrón written for an indeterminate number of small music boxes. Here weaves together the threads of different music box tunes to create a haunting, uncanny sound mass. Players are welcome to bring their own music box or may use one of the boxes which will be generously supplied by Kikkerland. New techniques for playing with the sound of the music box will be introduced over the course of the performance, which is open to musicians and non-musicians alike.

7:30 - 8:15 pm: Brass Ring (Mass Appeal Brass). Pier 62 Carousel, Chelsea Piers.
> At twilight on June 21st, brass players will join hands (musically speaking) around the carousel at Pier 62 to premiere Dance Suite for Carousel Orchestra by NYC composer Lev 'Ljova' Zhurbin. Written for an unlimited number of brass instruments, the piece is designed for teachers to play with students, or for more experienced players to play with less experienced players.

8:15 - 9:00 pm: The Gauntlet. The High Line, Chelsea.
> The Gauntlet is another new event, created by composer Sxip Shirey, and presented in collaboration with the Friends of the High Line, calling for two rows of 30 singers to engage in a musical dialogue as the public experiences the piece by walking at their own pace through a "tent" of vocalists.

Make Music New York will also include Punk Island, a celebration of all things punk (eight stages with over six dozen bands) taking place on Governors Island on June 19 from 10 am to 6 pm, and Porch Stomp, a festival of Americana, folk music and dance (more than 50 performances, jams and workshops by artists) being held on the porches of Governors Island's historic Nolan Park on June 18 from 12 pm to 5 pm.

For the complete schedule of Make Music New York events, please visit www.makemusicny.org.