Make Music Winter is just around the corner, with 33 cities joining to create a musical winter solstice on Thursday, December 21!

Just-announced events include:

• Trevor New’s interactive musical version of Orson Welles’s War of the Worlds, in Poughkeepsie NY and online;
• a new Resonant Path for gongs in Boston MA that anyone can play;
• a play-along Zydeco event in Montclair NJ called World Upside Down;
• new Roomful of Pianos events in Arizona, Missouri, and North Carolina;
• and instrument making, a drum circle, and karaoke in Greensburg PA.

As always, Make Music Winter events are 100% free and open to all. Visit makemusicwinter.org for the full schedule, and then join a music-making event near you!

We are thrilled to announce this year’s lineup of 40+ free, participatory parades and performances for Make Music Winter on Thursday, December 21.

Across the country, join a unique participatory event to celebrate the first day of Winter!

• In Los Angeles’s Little Tokyo neighborhood, pianist George Ko will ask people who they are shopping for, and what message they’d like to convey, and George will write a new, giftable song for them on the spot!

• Twenty gongs will ring in a parade in Auburn, CA, while nearly 40 gongs will form a Resonant Path at the Midwest Clinic International Band and Orchestra Conference in Chicago, IL.

• Music stores in Crystal Lake, IL, Duluth, GA, New York, NY, and Scottsdale, AZ will bring together local pianists for colossal Roomful of Pianos performances, including New York’s adaptation of Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite, performed simultaneously by students of all ages on multiple pianos (up to ten at a time!).

• Rhythm Band Instruments partners again with Make Music Winter to provide free Boomwhackers and other percussion for events in Land O’ Lakes, WI, Macon, GA, Muskogee, OK, Raleigh, NC, and more to be announced.

• Twelve independent music stores are hosting String Together, where beginning guitarists learn to change their guitar strings (with free strings donated by D’Addario), get a free lesson from a local teacher, and play together. String Together events will take place in Albuquerque, NM, Auburn, AL, Jeffersonville, IN, Louisville, KY, Milwaukee, WI, North Royalton, OH, Ossining, NY, Pittsburgh, PA, Salem, OR, State College, PA, Washington, DC, and Williamsport, PA.

Of course, there is so much more, from ukulele jams to caroling parties. Not to mention cities like Montclair, NJ, New York, NY, Ossining, NY and Salem, OR that go all-out with winter revelry all over town.

Visit www.makemusicwinter.org to see it all!

This past June 21, for the 9th year in a row, the Music Performance Trust Fund supported dozens of special initiatives for Make Music Day across the U.S. These events, ranging from songwriting workshops to West African drumming sessions, gave professional musicians the chance to mentor up-and-coming players while providing a high-quality concert to the public.

The MPTF contributed to an astonishing 51 Make Music programs in 2023, more than double the number in 2022! Our deepest thanks go to the MPTF for supporting so much music.

As we speak, dozens of projects are in the works for Make Music Winter on Thursday December 21!

Among the many creative music-making opportunities, we are especially excited to see Roomful of Pianos return this winter in Charlotte NC, Crystal Lake IL, Duluth GA, Phoenix AZ and more, uniting the piano community in colossal multi-piano events that anyone can join. (Roomful of Pianos originated at the NAMM Show, where it will return once again in January!)

All details of Make Music Winter will be announced later this month. If you have an event in mind, it’s not too late to add your own participatory event to the program! Just click the registration button and we will get in touch right away.

If you’ve been part of Make Music Day before, you might want to know about two other nonprofits with interesting opportunities to get involved throughout the year.

Hyperscore is an innovative, game-like music composition tool originally developed at the MIT Media Lab, that allows anyone to compose music by drawing dots and lines on a screen – no musical knowledge is needed, just your imagination.

This academic year, Hyperscore is offering free accounts to anyone who would like to join; there are monthly Zoom tutorials to help you with your work, and a challenge to complete a piece and share it online or at an in-person performance on Make Music Day 2024.

Sign up here to set up your free account and start composing!

Musicians On Call is a nonprofit organization that brings the healing power of music to patients, families and caregivers in healthcare environments across the country. By delivering the benefits of music, we aim to lift spirits, reduce anxiety, and create a positive environment for healing. MOC is look for volunteers to help us continue to make a difference:

• Volunteer Musician – Volunteer musicians are local, professional-caliber musicians who play music for patients virtually and at the bedside.
• Volunteer Guide (Non-Musician) – Volunteer Guides act as the “eyes and ears” of MOC, leading the musician through the experience of playing for patients and liaising between families and staff.

To apply, visit musiciansoncall.org/get-involved.

The winter counterpart to Make Music Day returns on Thursday, December 21!

Make Music Winter is a series of free, outdoor musical celebrations, taking place last year in 30+ U.S. cities. People of all ages, musical abilities, and backgrounds meet up to promenade and play participatory music for bells, electric guitars, voices, gongs, and more.

It’s a joyful way to ring in the longest night of the year, and celebrate the end of 2023.

For December 21, we are looking for events that turn audiences into music makers, in a true “make music” spirit!

Some popular initiatives will return from previous years, including String Together, Roomful of Pianos, Bell by Bell, and The Resonant Path. We can help you bring one of these ideas to life in your community, or you can come up with something completely new! 

For more inspiration and guidance for what Make Music Winter can look like, visit makemusicwinter.org and check out the photos, videos, and handbooks.

Have an idea of what you want to do? If you’re interested in leading an event for Make Music Winter on December 21, just fill out this form. We will get back to you right away.

Congratulations to all who took part in last week’s Make Music Day!

An astounding 4,791 music-making events took place in the U.S. on June 21 – 25% more than in 2022 – along with performances by thousands more musicians in 120 countries around the world who celebrated the day.

Check out 206 press clips about Make Music Day 2023, from media outlets in 71 U.S. cities, to learn about events you may have missed!

And congratulations to the winners of this year’s #MySongIsYourSong prize drawing, Damian Morris from Sydney Australia, and Ryan Oyer from Chattanooga, TN. Damian and Ryan will each receive a concert ukulele from Flight, a Scarlett 4i4 audio interface, and a Launchkey 37. Their performances, and others, are posted on the #MySongIsYourSong page.

We are finishing our scale challenge today, on Make Music Day, with the 12th key, Bb major. Congratulations! You have learned all of the major scales, which is a major achievement and something to be very proud of.

For today’s practice, you know what to do—play this scale thoughtfully, with awareness, listen as you play, and don’t rush. See if you can play it perfectly the first time through, by waiting until you are sure of the next note before you play it. This may seem really slow and tedious, but this cultivation of awareness will resonate through everything you play, and elevate the level of your playing. As before, play all of the previous scales that we learned, and assess how much you have grown as a musician in the past 12 weeks. Maybe you will choose to continue this work beyond Make Music Day, with the minor scales, or something else?

The route we took through all the keys was a little unusual, and I hope that this was interesting and stimulated further thought about the order in which you practice. Thank you for joining us, and Happy Make Music Day! #makemusicpractice