Make Music New York is back for its ninth year, celebrating the longest day of the year with more than 1,200 free concerts across the city on June 21. There are participatory events, live music in parks and plazas, unique gatherings in unusual places, and just about anything else you can think of. Below are only some of the highlights, arranged alphabetically.
Clavinova Piano Bar: Nate Buccieri will celebrate Frank Sinatra’s centennial by playing his songs from the back of a truck that will make its way to the Mid-Manhattan Library (11:15), P. J. Clarke’s (12:45), Madison Square Garden (2:45), Carnegie Hall (4:30), and Lincoln Center (6:00) before concluding with an after-party sing-along at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts (7:00 – 9:00)
Concerto for Buildings, a new work by Paula Matthusen, Scott Wollshleger, Daniel Goode, and Elijah Valongo for full orchestra and twenty-four percussionists, performed on eight buildings on Greene St. between Grand & Broome, 1:30 – 4:30
Exquisite Corpses, improvised, participatory musical conversations in burial grounds, including St. Mark’s Church-in-the-Bowery, Grant’s Tomb, the New York City Marble Cemetery, Trinity Church, and Woodlawn Cemetery
Mass Appeal: meet-ups for eighteen instruments in eighteen locations, including accordions in Carroll Park performing Terry Riley’s “In C,” harmonicas in the Great Hill Oval in Central Park, gongs in Prospect Park, guitars in Union Square, stones in Louis Valentino Jr. Park, Theremins in FDR Four Freedoms Park, and found sound for John Cage’s “49 Waltzes” at ten sites in all five boroughs
Pop-up Musicals: traveling group will perform songs from such shows as Avenue Q, A Chorus Line, Funny Girl, Guys and Dolls, Hair, RENT, Sweet Charity, and West Side Story as well as tunes from the Great American Songbook, Richard Tucker Square (11:00), Central Park (12 noon), Times Square (1:00), Worth Square at Madison Square Park (3:00), Herald Square (4:00), Jackson Square (5:00), Daryl Roth Theatre at Union Square (6:00)
Porch Stomp: more than forty live performances and workshops focusing on roots music, with anyone invited to join in, with Bonehart Flannigan, City Stompers, the Homesick Hound Dogs, the Idiot Brigade, the Nick Horner Family, the NYC Sacred Harp, and others, Nolan Park, Governors Island, 1:00 – 5:00
Punk Island: more than ninety punk bands on seven stages, including Aimless Again, Alienz, Bitchtits, Dreamcrusher, Duck and Cover, the Pandemics, the Sex Zombies, the Toxins, and Weird and Pissed Off, Coast Guard Pier, Staten Island, 10:00 am – 9:00 pm
Sousapalooza: hundreds of musicians will honor John Philip Sousa by performing more than a dozen of his compositions, including “Semper Fidelis,” “Rolling Thunder,” and “Stars and Stripes Forever,” Bryant Park Upper Terrace, 2:00 – 5:15
Street Studios, twelve mobile recording studios with two DJ engineers each, at such locations as the Lower Eastside Girls Club, Brookfield Place, Grandma’s Place, Cameo Gallery, Fowler Square, the Bronx Music Heritage Center, and Diversity Plaza, 11:00 am – 2:00 pm