Make Music Winter, the free, outdoor celebration with exuberant music-making events in 20 U.S. cities, today announced the lineup for its winter solstice programs on Saturday, December 21. These revelries on the shortest day of the year bring together people of all musical abilities and styles to play, sing, march and dance their way through streets, plazas, parks, and other shared public spaces.
First launched in 2011 as a complement to the annual Make Music Day on June 21, Make Music Winter focuses on musical parades that anyone can join, from a procession of strolling ukulele players to a Puerto Rican parranda. Each Make Music Winter city includes at least one mobile event that turns audiences into music makers, free for all to join.
Participating communities this year include Ossining (NY), Fairfield (CT), Atlanta and Macon (GA), Boston (MA), Brunswick County, Kinston, and Surry County (NC), Montclair (NJ), Muskogee (OK), Salem (OR), Chattanooga and Germantown (TN), Saledo (TX), Land O’Lakes, Middleton and Milwaukee (WI), and Aberdeen and Gig Harbor (WA).
New York City’s flagship Make Music Winter will debut several projects this season, including Street Motets for New York City by British composer Pete M. Wyer, commissioned by Make Music New York for the occasion. Fifty choral singers will break into pairs and embark on separate hour-long routes through the streets of Greenwich Village, all synchronized through the use of guide music played through ear buds. Each pair will intersect with others at various points in their journey to delight bystanders with unexpected bursts of harmony, before all singers converge at Washington Square Park’s Fountain Plaza for the program’s dramatic finale.
Nearby, Astor Place Plaza will host Ukulele Caroling by local singer/songwriter and uke whiz Gwendolyn Fitz, followed by Kevin Nathaniel’s new Kalimba Unity Groove Experience, with jam-friendly instruments available for public participation. Returning Make Music Winter programs include Flatfoot Flatbush with dancers, fiddlers, and pickers parading down Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn playing old-time tunes while flatfooting, a form of percussive dancing from Appalachia; Tilted Axes: Music for Mobile Electric Guitars, an orchestra of guitarists led by Patrick Grant performing original, untethered music in midtown; Gaits: A High Line Soundwalk with immersive, site-specific music by Lainie Fefferman, Jascha Narveson and Cameron Britt transforming participants’ movements into musical improvisations on The High Line; Mobile Hallelujah gatherings at seven midtown locations to sing the uplifting “Hallelujah Chorus” from Handel’s Messiah; a Harmonica Holiday Jam led by soloist and teacher Jia-Yi He at Hudson Yards; and two Parrandas, in East Harlem and in the Bronx, celebrating Puerto Rican’s rich musical culture. The complete lineup of NYC celebrations, including times, meeting locations, and details on how to participate, is available at MakeMusicNY.org.
Other cities are planning their own extensive winter programs. Montclair NJ’s 8th annual Make Music Winter celebrates the season with six music-making events, including Phil Kline’s boombox parade Unsilent Night, and The World Turned Upside Down, a participatory jam with Appalachian, bluegrass, and zydeco songs of protest. Salem OR’s 7th annual “Yule Make Music” features a bell parade through downtown, winter treats, and live bands, while Chattanooga TN’s first Make Music Winter brings six musical events to an outdoor market, a soup kitchen, and local retailers.
On a national level, Rhythm Band Instruments (RBI) celebrates Make Music Winter for the fifth year, providing over 400 instruments ranging from handbells to Boomwhackers to twelve cities for percussion parades and jam sessions in Atlanta (GA), Germantown (TN), Gig Harbor (WA), Kinston and Surry County (NC), Middleton and Milwaukee (WI), Montclair (NJ), Muskogee (OK), New York and Ossining (NY), and Salado (TX).
And Slovenia’s Flight Ukulele also joins this year’s Make Music Winter with a national program, donating 110 all-weather travel ukes for winter parades in Aberdeen and Gig Harbor (WA), Atlanta (GA), Germantown (TN), Milwaukee (WI), Montclair (NJ), and Surry County (NC).
All information about events and participating cities is available at MakeMusicDay.org/Winter.
Make Music Winter is presented by The NAMM Foundation (NAMMFoundation.org) and coordinated by the nonprofit Make Music Alliance (MakeMusicDay.org).
