So, check this out. Right now, as we speak, the Downtown Frederick Partnership is engaged in a battle. It’s not a battle to the death, but it’s probably the second-most intense thing. Now, what is the organization looking to do? Well, it’s looking to earn a grant aimed at helping “small to mid-sized cities” bring music to town … for free. As in, free to the public. As in, set up a stage somewhere downtown and boom: Taylor Swift pops up with a guitar and the dude from Bleachers.
Kind of.
No, but seriously: The last we heard, Frederick is in fourth place and the voting ends on Sunday. And because we’re all going to have a healthy heaping of downtime over the next few days, why don’t each of us max out our five votes on this fine city?!? That was rhetorical (i.e. DO IT). To break it down in a less annoyingly snarky way, let’s copy and paste a few details from the AMP site:
– The Levitt AMP [Your City] Grant Awards is an exciting new matching grant program made possible by Levitt Pavilions, a national nonprofit dedicated to strengthening the social fabric of America through the power of free, live music. With Levitt AMP, the joy of free, live music will be brought to small and mid-sized cities across the country.
– Grants will be awarded to 10 U.S.-based nonprofit organizations, or municipalities partnering with a nonprofit, serving towns and cities with metro populations of up to 400,000.
– Each grantee will receive up to $25K each in matching funds to present the Levitt AMP [Your City] Music Series, a minimum of 10 free outdoor concerts presented over 10 consecutive weeks during 2015-16.
– The concert series will feature a musically diverse lineup of high caliber entertainment, in keeping with the signature Levitt program.
You can vote for Frederick here. You can check out a map of where all the proposals in the country are coming from here (note: We are the only one in Maryland, so wouldn’t it be nice if the entire state rallied around Frederick?!). And you can learn more about the entire operation here. We figure, hey: If you vote once a day between now and Sunday, we should be good to go. This is a great opportunity for this burgeoning local music community, friends. Let’s not sit idle.
