“Make Music New York”—a one-day festival set for June 21, the first day of summer—has announced plans for free musical events to take place throughout the city in a variety of musical genres from punk and jazz to hip-hop and opera, from 11 a.m. to 12 midnight. This is the third year for the festival. Institutions hosting or presenting concerts this year include the Brooklyn Museum, Carnegie Hall, Central Park SummerStage, Jazz Gallery, Jazzmobile, Queens Museum of Art, Symphony Space, and the Times Square Alliance. New this year is Mass Appeal, which brings together hundreds of musicians to play pieces for single types of instruments: accordions, acoustic guitars, bagpipes, cellos, circuit benders, clarinets, flutes, French horns, glockenspiels, harmonicas, megaphones, pianos, samba drummers, saxophones, trombones, ukuleles, veenas, violins, and waterphones. Mass Appeal will meet for an evening jam session at Rumsey Playfield in Central Park, led by David Amram; musicians will improvise a call-and-response based on a “musical handshake” written by singer/harpist Elissa Weiss. Mass Appeal will also include a performance of Henry Brant’s Orbits, which involves 80 trombones, organ, and sopranino performing on the ramps of the Guggenheim Museum, conducted by Neely Bruce. At Fort Green Park in Brooklyn, American Opera Projects will present “The Voice of Brooklyn” with composers Michael Rose, Daniel Felsenfeld, and Jennifer Griffith, with opera companies Rhymes With Opera and Opera On Tap.
Posted June 2, 2009
