Congratulations and thanks to everyone who took part in last week’s inaugural Make Music Winter!
In case you missed it, our winter solstice parades received great coverage all over:
** The New York Times reviewed five Make Music Winter events: The Gaits, Pilgrimage, Thru-Line, Tilted Axes, and …how time passes…
** Critic David Patrick Stearns reviewed Phil Kline’s Peregrine
** The invaluable Streetfilms produced a video of Thru-Line, also reviewed by New Yorker critic Alex Ross
** Thomas Deneuville from I Care If You Listen captured The Gaits, also picked up by the Los Angeles Times
** Our friends from East Harlem Presents compiled a video from each stop of the Parranda
** Do:Tank Brooklyn posted photos from Bell By Bell
** Tilted Axes (pictured above) was well covered with video and photos
** Daniel Brooks captured a short video of the Soho Gamelan Walk
** Finally, in …how time passes…, Doug Perkins and Chris Peck created an utterly brilliant holiday medley the likes of which the world has never seen. Click here to watch the video.
(If you were there last week and have more video or photos to share, please email them to makemusicny@gmail.com.)
Make Music Winter — and the epic Make Music New York, coming up again on Thursday, June 21, 2012 — are only possible thanks to the generosity of our donors. If you appreciate the musical creativity we’ve brought to New York City over the last year, and can make a tax-deductible year-end gift to help us continue our work in 2012, please click here to donate now.
New York Times, “Classical Music/Opera Listings for Dec. 16-22,” December 15, 2011
NY Daily News, “Free & Cheap in New York: Bell by Bell parade in the East Village rings in the winter solstice,” by Kathryn Kattalia, December 21, 2011
Flavorpill, “Make Music Winter (Editor Pick),” by Mindy Bond, December 21, 2011
Thirteen WNET, “Bach on Track: The Make Music Winter Festival Performs on the F Line,” by Daniel T. Allen, December 15, 2011
DNAinfo, “Composers to Set High Line to Music with iPhone App,” by Mathew Katz, December 20, 1011
Feast of Music, “Make Music Winter is Tomorrow,” December 20, 2011
Brownstoner, “Make Music Winter Happens Tomorrow,” by Emily Nonko, December 20, 2011
Village in Volume, one of this year’s Make Music Winter parades on December 21st, invites participants to use objects picked up throughout Greenwich Village as percussion instruments. Some of the most interesting instruments have been created by Noël Claro‘s students from Parsons the New School For Design — a school that’s right along the parade route, and a frequent Make Music New York partner.
See a preview of the instruments below, and come to Village in Volume next week to try them out yourself!
New York Magazine, “Top Ten Classical Performances of 2011,” by Justin Davidson, December 4, 2011
(Miller Theatre’s Inuksuit performance for MMNY is #7)
Time Out New York, “Make Music Winter (Critics’ Pick),” December 10, 2011
The New Yorker, “Make Music Winter,” December 19 & 26, 2011
New York Times, “Parade Keeps Its Boom,” by Joshua Brustein, December 9, 2011
El Diario, “Parrandas toman El Barrio en esta Navidad,” by Gloria Medina, December 7, 2011
Art on Air, “Interview: Aaron Friedman, Make Music Winter,” by Jeannie Hopper, December 5, 2011
If you’re not taking part in Make Music Winter as a musician, join us behind the scenes!
We need volunteers to safely shepherd each parade through NYC streets, and to document each project. Volunteers will work directly with each parade organizer. The only time commitment required is on December 21st itself.
After five years of music on the longest day of the year, Make Music New York is excited to launch an innovative new festival next month on the longest night of the year, called Make Music Winter.
If you are a singer or musician — and even if you aren’t — we invite you to take part!
Make Music Winter is inspired by composer Phil Kline’s annual Unsilent Night, in which a meditative, joyous electronic piece is played through dozens of boomboxes carried by volunteers through the East Village on an evening in late December. Unsilent Night has taken place since 1992, drawing crowds of over 1,000.
Launching next month on Wednesday, December 21st, Make Music Winter expands this cult holiday tradition into a festival of one dozen musical parades, each with its own distinct type of music, in neighborhoods across New York City.
Like Make Music New York, Make Music Winter is free, outdoors, and profoundly participatory.
Bring your instrument, your voice, or your hands and join brilliant new projects for Bells, Boomboxes, Brass Bands, Electric Guitars, iPhones, Percussionists, Parranderos, Singers, Strings, and more!
Details are available on our website. We look forward to having you with us!
Nick Franglen‘s 24-hour-long performance for Make Music New York 2011, Hymn to the Manhattan Bridge, has been turned into an evocative 17 minute film by Bevis Bowden.
The photography is a hymn to the bridge in its own right. Highly recommended!
SWELTER was a sound installation made by Super Critical Mass and performed around Central Park Lake at this year’s Make Music New York by Tilt Brass, an experimental horn ensemble that, for this performance, invited horn players of varying age and skill to participate in the thirty-five minute concert.
In clusters along the shore, the horn players volleyed a call and response across the water. There were periods of long tones with long spaces between responses and then a rapid succession of notes pursued from one end of the lake to the other.Other couples drifted by us with umbrellas or hats and amiable faces, some trying to make out the musical patterns while others sat enjoying the sounds, the sun, and the day.
Here are a few shots as we were beginning to assemble on June 21st for Make Music New York’s NY premiere of Mauricio Kagel‘s “Eine Brise” for 111 bicyclists (we didn’t quite make 111). It was great riding down Cornelia Street and making the fun sounds the piece requires (the bell sound was quite lovely) and we loved doing the piece so much the first time down the street that we turned around and did it again! 
