Music Day 2009 will take over Exhibition Road, London’s premier cultural quarter, for a free festival of live, international music and culture on midsummer’s day and Father’s Day, Sunday 21 June.

Celebrating the diversity of international culture in the area, a huge range of indoor and outdoor stages will host over 100 performances and a variety of music including pop, urban, folk, rock, classical, opera and jazz, by new and established acts.

Throughout the day, children can join in with free workshops and classes to stimulate their taste for music. Families can create their own music from recycled objects and junk with Weapons of Sound and play with the Imperial College Percussion Club at the Science Museum or try Tribo Capoeira (the Brazilian art form which mixes percussion, acrobatics, songs and fight-dance movements) at Imperial College.

Alternatively they can learn and perform a piece of opera in under 90 minutes with Streetwise Opera or join a Bollywood dancing workshop at the V&A. The Family Morning on the outdoor stage in Kensington Gardens includes the Nzinga Dance African Drumming Workshop and RCM Spark’s Kazoo Collective, after which families can enjoy an hour of friendly summer music from Bad Ass Brass and the Fabulous
Boogie Boys (venue TBC).

Music Day 2009 is a rare opportunity to catch bands, for free, before many embark on the summer music festival circuit. Electronic dance act Banco de Gaia headline at the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG), pioneering British hip-hop artist Akira the Don performs at the Natural History Museum and young Parisian electro-pop act Koko von Napoo appear at Institut français. Performing later in Kensington Gardens
are Swedish electronica band Little Dragon and the post-punk pop sounds of the carnivalesque Ebony Bones.

The full programme will be available shortly here