Block Parties

Cornelia Street block party, photo by Peter Matthews, MMNY '08

Each year for Make Music New York, dozens of community groups have put together musical block parties, bringing their neighbors together for Cuban jazz, electronic Gameboy music, indie rock, steel pans, hip hop, and string orchestras in streets across the city.

This year, why not your block?

To help you throw a party on your street, we’ve put together a helpful handbook, updated for 2012.

Download it here: MMNY Block Party Handbook (pdf)

Block party applications are due by March 21st to be considered for an event in June. If you’re interested in having a block party, read the handbook and contact us this week! Email ethan@makemusicny.org to get started.

Parks

In about a week, we will list over 100 New York City parks on our website for musicians and organizations to use for Make Music New York. These spaces are first come, first served — if you’re a musician who wants to perform in a park, register today, and we will send you an email as soon as the parks go live on the website.

In the meantime, please don’t use the “Create your own location” tool to register a park — only the parks we put up can be permitted for Make Music New York. (If you want to create a space on a sidewalk, plaza, garden, or closed-off street… that can work!)

EMEFE at The Winery (Harlem), MMNY 2012

Multiple Venues

Lots of MMNY locations are managed by Business Improvement Districts, library systems, and other groups that oversee multiple outdoor locations. We are working on a tool right now to allow these groups to register all of their locations at once on our website. If you have more than three locations and are interested in having an account that lets you manage them all at once, email aaron@makemusicny.org.

Volunteering

Right now, we need volunteers to help organize MMNY in neighborhoods throughout the city, and to make phone calls to musicians from our Astor Place office. Email makemusicny@gmail.com if you’d like to join us.

Next Tuesday marks the start of summer in New York City, and summer in NYC means block parties, everyone pitching in to have a good time. Block parties are a feature of Make Music New York – along with the one outside Cornelia Street Cafe, you can find one by Joe’s Pub and in Williamsburg – and there’s a great one going on down on the Lower East Side intersection of Suffolk and Rivington, starting at 3pm: The Afro-Asian Block Party.

This one is sponsored by Afro-Asian Inc., with invaluable organizational help from their music director, Salome James. It’s Afro, it’s Asian, it’s a party, and a whole lot more; music, food, exhibitions, expect a great street performance. The music is a great urban mix of Latin, Blues, Jazz and R&B, and James loves the diversity in it, something that will bring the community together. There are bands, singers and more. Everything is going to be great fun, and she’s especially looking forward to her colleague Jim Koeppel playing Blues with his Dust My Blues Band – Salome herself is planning on sitting in on vocals with “Kansas City” – and their recent booking of the Latin Band, Epi. There’s also going to be a demonstration by Shaolin Kung Fu and Master Lan.

Salome, Afro-Asian Inc. and the musicians are not the only ones making this possible. The local Burger King is providing the electricity, thanks to Pau Seto; volunteer John Lee negotiated two tubs of free ice cream from the Chinatown Ice Cream Factory (way to go, John!); Drew Figueroa and The Suffolk bar are providing the sound equipment; the Lions Club kids group, the Leo’s are going to help set up that equipment; Jun Park designed the flyer; Kearney L. James, who took pictures last year, is doing so again; and Carlos Morales helped with all the social networking and advertising. Now that is a community effort, and they all deserve a party!

Music in the streets takes on a whole new meaning for the Make Music New York Block Parties, and one of the most interesting, and certainly the most varied, Block Party this year is sponsored by the Cornelia Street Cafe. It’s a Block Party, a World Music performance and a demonstration of some of the more interesting aspects of the avant-garde rolled into one. Oh, and it’s so much more.

Starting at 4pm on June, 21, the block in front of the Cafe (Cornelia Street between Bleecker and West 4th), will be the stage for bicyclists and their bells, percussionists dressed as muppets, a Shakuhachi ensemble and dramatic opera singing. Which means it’s going to be just like what many New Yorkers experience during their daily commute . . . as proof, I submit photographic evidence of my first encounter with the Xlyopholks, captured on the Uptown 1 platform at the Columbus Circle station, in the spring of 2008. Those are actual humans inside the costumes, no need to be alarmed by anything other than it seems unnatural that anyone can have so much fun while wearing a giant, furry costume on a warm day. I really don’t know what else to say about them, and Jean Rohe, who is organizing the program for the Cafe and MMNY, couldn’t add much either, except that the group plays seriously fine, seriously fun music (this is true!), and that the actual number of variety of costumes will be unpredictable, so make sure to show up to see for yourself.

It’s going to be a spectacle, and Jean pointed out to me that “all the groups on the performance schedule are pretty spectacular,” but it’s musically good stuff, there’s no gimmicks about it. The first performance will be Eine Brise, a piece by the experimental composer Mauricio Kagel, organized by Red Light New Music (responsible for the recent production of the opera Invisible Cities as well as an upcoming concert at Issue Project Room inspired by the mobiles of Alexander Calder). Giving new meaning to the term Mass Appeal, Eine Brise is scored for 111 bike riders, who will roll past the audience while whistling, singing, ringing bells and making various noise for a minute or two. If you’d like to hear it from the inside, you can contact Red Light at redlightnewmusic@gmail.com or message Red Light on facebook by June 20. All you need is a bike, a helmet and a bell. Our own Numinous will be among the pack, and I’m looking forward to a report from him.

There will also be a forty-five minute set from a shakuhachi ensemble from the Kyo-Shin-An Shakuhachi Dojo, led by James Nyoraku Schlefer. This is intriguing and unusual music to hear, not only outside, but on a busy city street. The sense of quiet, slowness, calm and haunting color will be as great a contrast to the normal experience of the Greenwich Village as can be imaginable. And just as Eine Brise and the Xlopholks will give a new sensation to the space outside the Cafe, so will this group’s music pervade and reshape what it means to be on the street.

So will the singers from the Bel Canto series at the Cafe. Curated Eugene Sirotkine, they will appear at the call of a trumpet herald from a nearby rooftop – adding yet another spatial dimension to the musical experience, as Jean said – and Sirotkine and singers are a regular feature at Cornelia Street. Tuesday evenings they serenade patrons with great music from Bellini, Donizetti, Rossini and others. Think of it as a beautiful way to end a spectacular afternoon of music, and a siren song that may entice you inside, for wine and song.

Each year for Make Music New York, dozens of community groups have put together musical block parties, bringing their neighbors together for Cuban jazz, electronic Gameboy music, indie rock, steel pans, hip hop, and string orchestras in streets across the five boroughs.

This year, why not your block?

To help you throw a party on your street, we’ve put together a helpful handbook, updated for 2011.

Download it here: MMNY Block Party Handbook (pdf)

Each community board has a different procedure for their block party applications, with some requiring that you apply as early as March 1st to be considered for an event in June. If you’re interested in having a block party, read the handbook and contact your community board this month!

(Are you on a busy street? Consider closing the block after 5pm, or closing just the parking lane. Email makemusicny@gmail.com with questions.)

Each year for Make Music New York, dozens of community groups have put together musical block parties, bringing their neighbors together for Cuban jazz, electronic Gameboy music, indie rock, steel pans, hip hop, and string orchestras in streets across the five boroughs.

This year, why not your block?

To help you throw a party on your street, we’ve put together a helpful handbook, with all of the forms and instructions in one place. Download it here:

MMNY Block Party Handbook (pdf)

Each community board has a different procedure for their block party applications, with some requiring that you contact them as early as March 1st to be considered for an event in June. If you’re interested in having a block party, please read the handbook, and contact your community board this month!

(Are you on a busy street? Consider closing the block after 5pm, or closing just the parking lane. Email makemusicny@gmail.com with questions.)

This Earth Day, we’re happy to announce that MMNY is partnering with Brooklyn’s 3rd Ward on their free Green Bikes Block Party!

3rd Ward’s Green Bikes Birthday Block Party
Sunday, May 3rd
2pm – 8pm
Morgan Ave and Stagg Street, in Brooklyn

Starting in May, when you sign up for a 3rd Ward membership you get a free bike! To celebrate, 3rd Ward is taking over Stagg Street for a massive block party right outside their door, featuring:

* bike competitions
* films and performances
* music videos from Moviehouse
* a photobooth
* badminton
* drinks
* BBQ
* live screen-printing
* free workshops
* and live music from The Wild Yaks, Pterodactyl, Afuche, Aa, Lam, DJ Drew Heffron and DJ Clay Franklin.

Compete in a drag race, bring a t-shirt for live screen-printing, take a workshop or just come for the fun!

RSVP to: events@3rdward.com