Amateur and professional musicians will gather all over the city for annual Make Music New York festival (photo courtesy NYC Guitar School)
Every June 21, Make Music New York celebrates the longest day of the year with a full slate of free concerts in limitless genres throughout the five boroughs, in parks, libraries, restaurants, stores, plazas, and out on the street and aboard party buses. Not only can you check out some great shows but you can also participate; Mass Appeal once again features nearly two dozen performances in which everyone is invited to bring their own instrument and join in, with accordions in Sheridan Triangle, bagpipes in Herald Square, cellos in Flatiron Building Plaza, clarinets in Washington Square Park, double reeds in Bleecker Playground, flutes on Central Park’s Great Hill, guitars in Union Square and at the 92nd St. Y, harps in Urban Plaza, mandolins in Theodore Roosevelt Park, ouds in Dag Hammarskjöld Plaza, ukuleles in McCarren Park, and violins on Cornelia St., among other gatherings. And you don’t need an instrument at all to take part in humming in the DUMBO ConEd Farragut Substation and singing in Times Square. Some of the more unusual shows include Alvin Curran’s “Maritime Rites” played by eighty musicians on rowboats on the lake in Central Park at 5:00, a gospel parade with the Lafayette Inspirational Ensemble in Park Slope at 6:30, improvisational jazz on the High Line at 6:30, and Erik Satie’s eighteen-hour “Vexations” continuing through midnight on the corner of Broad & Wall Sts.