Now in its third year, Make Music New York, “the largest music event ever to grace Gotham” (Metro New York), is a unique festival of free concerts in public spaces throughout the five boroughs of New York City, all on Sunday, June 21st, the first day of summer. MMNY takes place simultaneously with similar festivities in more than 327 cities around the world — a global celebration of music making.

From 11 in the morning to 10 at night, musicians of all ages, creeds, and musical persuasions — from hip hop to opera, Latin jazz to punk rock — perform on streets, sidewalks, stoops, plazas, cemeteries, parks and gardens. From high school bands to marquee names, MMNY is open to anyone who wants to take part, enjoyed by everyone who wants to attend.

Along with the hundreds of individual concerts, MMNY will introduce a new project this year called “Mass Appeal,” where hundreds of musicians band together to perform massive pieces written for a single type of instrument.

MMNY is also celebrating Jazzmobile’s 45th anniversary this year with a special series of concerts: Randy Weston, Obo Addy, and Kwaku Martin Obeng in Manhattan (Dominick St and Hudson St in SoHo, 3:30pm), Lily White in Queens (Flushing Town Hall, 4pm) and Jose Obando in the Bronx (Bronx Museum, Grand Concourse at 165th, 3pm).

MMNY ’08
Make Music New York held its second festival on Saturday, June 21, 2008, with 875 free performances by 3,200 musicians.

MMNY performances in 2008 included:

• 69 punk bands on nine stages throughout Governors Island (“Punk Island”), headlined by Reagan Youth;

• a Lincoln Square block party, with performances by the New York City Opera, New York Philharmonic, Jazz at Lincoln Center, ASCAP, American Composers Orchestra, and American Opera Projects;

• Bronx middle school jazz and rock bands in Central Park, joined by Roberta Flack;

• three Beijing Opera companies, two Balinese gamelans, and one Polish musical theater company, on sidewalks from Midtown to Maspeth;

• block parties with Gameboy music in Tribeca, contemporary classical in the West Village, Cuban jazz (featuring Roy Hargrove) in SoHo, and hip hop in Park Slope;

• over 100 local rock bands blanketing Bedford Avenue in Williamsburg;

• African percussion from Jamaica, Queens, to Bed Stuy, Brooklyn, to the steps of Carnegie Hall; Big Band Jazz from Harlem to Staten Island to the Coney Island boardwalk; Jewish kids songs on the Upper West Side; Tamil Church choir music in Middle Village, Queens; Gospel singers in Flatbush, Brooklyn; and hundreds more…