Make Music Winter is Back in NYC this December

Make Music New York is proud to announce the sixth annual Make Music Winter, taking place on Wednesday, December 21, 2016, the shortest day of the year. From the The Bronx to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, thirteen participatory parades will bring New Yorkers together to sing, play, and dance their way through streets, parks, and other public spaces throughout the city. Amateurs and professionals, smartphone users and fiddlers - all are invited to take part.

Like Make Music New York's annual flagship event on June 21, the first day of summer, Make Music Winter is a free, outdoor musical event that turns audiences into music makers. Inspired by Phil Kline's annual Unsilent Night - the well-loved boombox parade that takes place in NYC on December 17 this year - Make Music Winter's innovative projects transform New York's cityscape for a single day. Now in its sixth year, Make Music Winter has become a hallmark of the season.

Featured artists include members of acclaimed Afrobeat ensemble Antibalas, singers Onome andJascha Hoffman, all-women Brazilian drumline Fogo Azul (formerly known as Batala NYC), keyboardist Karl Larson, conductor Malcolm Merriweather, composers Lainie Fefferman,Jascha Narveson, Cameron Britt, Ravi Kittappa and P. Spadine, and others. A full schedule, with starting times and exact locations, is also available at www.makemusicny.org.

Participating organizations and businesses include the Bronx Music Heritage Center, Brooklyn Botanic Garden, Cathedral of St. John the Divine, Con Edison, DUMBO Business Improvement District, Friends of the High Line, M&T Bank, North Flatbush Business Improvement District, Nos Quedamos, Shake Shack, Stumptown Coffee Roasters, andSymphony Space.

NEW EVENTS

Along with several returning favorites, Make Music Winter includes three new events. African Echoes, with Onome and Jascha Hoffman, is a variation on last year's yodeling procession, Alpine Echoes. Based on on call-and-response traditions in West African a cappella singing, it welcomes vocalists of all levels. It starts at 4:32 pm (sunset) at the Old Fulton Plaza in DUMBO, and makes its way through the neighborhood to the 68 Jay St. Bar for a happy hour reception.

Off the Afro-beaten Path is led by percussionists of the Brooklyn-based Afrobeat ensemble Antibalas, known to many in the US for popularizing the music and legacy of Fela Kuti.Participants on this percussion parade will weave through the streets of Greenwich Village, creating a rhythmic fabric of interlocking parts and sounds. Percussionists of every level are invited to bring shekeres, claves, agogo bells, cowbells, and any other handheld percussion that melds with the rhythmic web of the West African musical forms that make up Afrobeat. It also starts at 4:32 pm(sunset), at the Washington Square Park fountain.

Parranda de Inverno features all-women drumline Fogo Azul in a head-turning parade of Brazilian rhythm and dance through the streets of midtown Manhattan. Participants are invited to bring their Brazilian percussion instruments, or come just to look, listen, and walk with this vibrant ensemble. The drumline will pass through 46th Street's Little Brazil micro-neighborhood and theplazas along 6th Avenue. It starts at 5 pm at Rockefeller Plaza between 49th and 50th streets.

As in previous years, baritone Christopher Dylan Herbert will perform Winterize, singing Schubert's seasonally-appropriate song cycle Winterreise at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden; The Gaits smartphone parade will proceed along The High Line; Puerto Rican carols will be sung in The Bronx in a Melrose Parranda; and Flatfoot Flatbush fiddlers will lead dancers in an old-timey dancing procession through Prospect Heights.

As with all Make Music New York events, Make Music Winter is free to the public, no tickets required. Further information on Make Music New York is available at www.makemusicny.org.

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