Make Music NY comes to Sunset Park

Saturday, June 21 marks the official start of summer and what better way to celebrate than with music in the streets!

That’s the idea behind Make Music New York (MMNY), part of a worldwide music celebration, which brings over 1,000 local performers and groups to neighborhood parks and other outdoor spaces throughout Brooklyn and its four sister boroughs.

Sunset Park residents have participated in MMNY for all of its eight years, alternating between surprising shoppers outside local businesses on Fifth Avenue and holding block parties. This year, the music will kick off at noon outside the AT&T store between 51^st and 52^nd Streets and a trolley will shuttle shoppers and revelers up and down Fifth Avenue between 35^th and 64^th Streets.

The lineup includes Katherine Class at noon, a community Open Mic at 12:30 p.m., Musicians-In-Training at 1 p.m., NuevoHit at 1:30 p.m., Regina Opera Company’s Italian opera and Broadway melodies from 2-3 p.m., Brooklyn-based CLOSENUF’s pop and rockabilly anthems from 3-5 p.m., and Amistad’s alt-rock from 5-6 p.m.

“Music is such an important part of everyone’s life, so whenever we have an event, we try to have music,” said Renee Giordano, executive director of the Sunset Park Fifth Avenue Business Improvement District, which is sponsoring the event and booked the trolley for the day. “So this would be natural, to have impromptu music while people are shopping.

“Since this year, June 21 falls on a Saturday, we just tried to hold a larger event. One year it was on Father’s Day, one year it was raining and performers still came,” Giordano said. “It’s just a thing that people like. Once the music starts, we get a crowd.”

Francine Garber, producer at Regina Opera, which has its home-base at Our Lady of Perpetual Help’s auditorium, said it was a no-brainer to participate in the day’s festivities.

“We thought it sounded like fun,” she said. “And we expect it to be beautiful weather, which has been wretched this winter, so people are really enjoying getting out into nice fresh air.”

In addition to the music, there will be free face-painting for children outside of Sunset Park, at 43^rd Streets on Fifth Avenue—the original planned music location, which was moved due to park restrictions for amplified music.