Even though March has only just been born, we’re already looking forward to the middle of the summer, and while the winter winds have been whipping around outside, we’ve been hard at work, like a bunch of squirrels who’ve got the seasons the wrong way round.
The Fete de la Musique is always timed to enjoy the longest day and the exact middle of summer – every year on the 21st of June – and that’s definitely something to look forward to! With the Fete in Berlin growing year after year, the 25th anniversary of the first ever Fete de la Musique is upon us, and we think it’s going to be bigger and better than ever.
Among various new aspects of Berlin’s yearly day of music which we’ve introduced in the last couple of years, one of our favourites is that we get to choose a focus district: although the Fete is of course spread all through the town (and beyond), we thought it would be cool to choose one neighbourhood each year on which to throw a particular spotlight. In 2019 that was Köpenick, with Berliner hiphop star Romano as district ‘ambassador’…
The 2020 Focus District is set to be Mitte.
Yes that’s right, Berlin-Mitte. Of course Berlin-Mitte as a district now includes what we think of as Wedding and Tiergarten, which means we have a whole lot of music venues and the like that fall into 2020’s Fete de la Musique!
From the Schokoladen in Mitte, to Humboldthain and Silent Green in Wedding, to the upper echelons of good taste with the Berlin opera houses of Berliner Oper and Komische Oper – and of course with the Gendarmenmarket, where in 2019 we held the Europe-wide singalong, where hundreds of people turned out…Berlin-Mitte presents a huge range of musical cultural delights that we are sure will give the 2020 Fete de la Musique in Berlin that extra special something…
And let’s not foerget that this year is also the 25th anniversary of the Fete de la Musique – 25 years since the day that the then Paris cultural minister declared that the streets should be filled with music and bade every musician – professional, amateur, old and young – to come out onto the streets and play.
Photo copyright Jim Kroft