Tuesday 21 June will be Make Music Day and Edinburgh Libraries are calling out to all musicians, groups, ensembles, choirs, orchestras to join us. We will be putting together a varied programme to fill midsummer’s day with music all across our service.
In 2019 we ran successful programmes of events in Central, Morningside, Craigmillar and Stockbridge Libraries. With a range of groups performing Opera to Klezmer, recorder solos to the Rolling Hills Chorus. In 2020 and 2021 we were forced online with a curtailed but no less interesting programme of events with choirs, instrumentalists and Library staff singing the Make Music Day anthems Bring Me Sunshine and Stand By Me.
Make Music Day started life 40 years ago in 1982. In France under President Mitterrand’s Socialist Party, Maurice Fleuret, was appointed as Director of Music and Dance at the French Ministry of Culture with a responsibility for festivals and events. He immediately saw that there was a discrepancy in the number of children and adults able to play musical instruments and the numbers who actually participated in any form of music making.
Fete da la Musique was born. Fleuret’s statement rang loud: “Music is everywhere and the concert is nowhere”. The mission statement for the day became that amateur and professional musician should give of their time freely and that all performances should to be free to attend. Forty years on those statements are pretty much the same.
Year on year the festival grew and not just in France. By the early 90s the festival had become an event in approximately 80 countries and this year that number stands at 126 countries around the world. The 21 June was chosen as it is normally the longest day of the year or the summer solstice. If you wished, and some people do, you could have musical events from the early hours when the sun rises to when it sets late in the evening, and those performances could be anywhere – street corners, driveways, concert halls, libraries, bandstands, telephone boxes. Anywhere and everywhere, performed and watched by anyone and everyone.
In that spirit, this year we are back and able to welcome musicians into the building to perform and we will welcome audiences to the library to watch live music. Please get in touch with us if you would like to take part. Please give us a description of what you do or what you would like to do on the 21 June. If you are able to link us to any online examples of your previous work, that would be useful, but certainly not essential.
Calling all musicians, calling all musicians, calling all musicians!
We look forward to hearing from you. Thank you!
0131 242 8050
central.music.library@edinburgh.gov.uk
Tales of One City 