Make Music Day Returns for 2024 With Tina Weymouth, Chris Frantz, A. R. Rahman & More

On Friday (June 21), this year’s Make Music Day will kick off in the town gazebo of Fairfield, Conn., where Tina Weymouth and Chris Frantz will ceremonially strike a handmade gathering drum. The day’s activities, beginning at 9 a.m. ET (3 p.m. in France), will include a real-time musical relay featuring musicians in 24 countries over the course of four hours.

The overall Make Music Day event will be celebrated 120 countries with a total of 5,000 concerts and music events taking place that day. The celebrations seek to bring out the musician in all of us, regardless of skill level, with outdoor concerts, jam sessions, lessons and music-making of all kinds.

Make Music Day is presented by the National Association of Music Merchants (NAMM) Foundation. The concept was conceived by Jack Lang when he was French minister of culture.

The global online relay, dubbed Pulsations, will be streamed online at the makemusicday.org homepage. It will feature musicians in various countries playing a 10-minute set of their choosing, ending in a heartbeat rhythm. As one set ends, the next one will pick up the heartbeat rhythm in a different country, allowing for a seamless transition between musicians. Pulsations will begin in Auckland, New Zealand, and end in Paris.

“Since its inception in France in 1982, Make Music Day has transcended borders to become an international event,” said Pulsations organizers Dominique Hervieu (director of the Paris 2024 Cultural Olympiad) and Lang (now president of the Arab World Institute) in a joint statement. “Make Music Day aims to impart a universal dimension to this special day centered around music, widely regarded as the most unifying art form globally…. The Pulsations project mirrors our collective values, promoting camaraderie, peace, and mutual respect worldwide.”

The heartbeat rhythm that serves as the connective musical tissue is composed by French-Lebanese trumpeter Ibrahim Maalouf, according to the release announcing the festival. The global online performance will culminate with a livestream at the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris, where Ibrahim Maalouf & The Trumpets of Michel-Ange will perform an hourlong set to close out the four-hour musical relay,

Performers during the musical relay will include A.R. Rahman, who will perform live from the KM Music Conservatory in India; funk-pop band TOI in New Zealand, who will sing “Ain’t Just Dreaming,” which achieved chart success in that country; Dwight Trible, who will perform with the Fernando Pullum Youth Arts Center Jazz Ensemble in Los Angeles; and folk-rock duo Twin Flames performing at Hugh’s Room Live in Toronto.

Besides the online portion, the globe-spanning festival will be shown live on large public screens in several participating cities, including Paris, Toronto and Hanover, Germany.