Celebrating Community Through Music: Make Music Plymouth 2k15

You don’t always have to travel far to feel like you’re somewhere new. Elements like books, music, and movies can help to push our imaginations beyond reality. One of those elements in particular helped transport some people to their happy places this weekend. On Saturday June 20th, the town of Plymouth celebrated their 2nd annual Make Music Plymouth where vendors allowed buskers to perform outside their establishments all day to celebrate summer, music, and community.

In charge of this event was the Central New Hampshire Chamber of Commerce and their leader Scott Stephens. They headed the organization of this event with the help of Biederman's Deli and Pub, Dressers Unlimited, Rand's Hardware, and last year’s main organizer, The New Hampshire Music Festival. Most of the organization of performers came from the Make Music Plymouth Facebook page where musicians could click to sign up, choose a venue, choose a time, and practice until the 20th! The event saw people performing rock’n roll, country, folk, reggae, pop, and pretty much every genre of music you can think of!

The event started at 10AM with people checking in with attendants from the New Hampshire Music Festival at the welcome table. People arrived with yoga mats to partake in a yoga session led by Katie Comeau of Yoga Studio 8 for the first 45 minute session of the festival. While the free yoga class happened on the Town Common, the first musicians started playing around Main Street providing the background for the yoga session. At 11AM was a free concert by the Baker Valley Band and their enthusiastic leader, Paul Hubert, who got to play his own set by himself later that day. The rest of the day was all 45-minute performances by different bands, soloists, singers, guitarists, harmonica players, fiddlers, etc. They took their lunch and dinner breaks to buy food from places like Gowen Realty who barbecued hamburgers and hotdogs to raise money for Keeping Me, You, and Memories Alive Inc. which works to help families battling cancer in the region of Central New Hampshire.

Another great event within the day of music making was that of Music & Arts a national company that works to sell band and orchestra instruments, rental instruments, and sheet music to musicians of all ages. Their event was called the “Instrument Petting Zoo” and gave visiting children the opportunity to try instruments they might not get to try every day. I watched as little kids played on a big, electric blue trombone! Music & Arts also donated a guitar to the event to give to an aspiring young string player! The raffle winner of the day was Donna Levesque of Rumney, NH.

The town of Plymouth hopes that there can be a 3rd annual Make Music Plymouth that is bigger and better every year it is put on! We also hope that our visitors up to the Lakes Region will venture out and find community events like this where community members get the opportunity to share their love for their region of New Hampshire with new visitors. There is a lot to be thankful for in this beautiful, mountainous region and we’re glad to see people creating and celebrating music in it!

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*Photo credit to Brad Dumont of the New Hampshire Music Festival*