MAKE MUSIC DAY 2025
The global celebration of music making is back, with Make Music Day taking place on Saturday 21st June around Australia and the world.
Originating in 1982 as Fête de la Musique in France, now taking place in a thousand cities and places across 120 countries, Make Music Day is a musical free-for-all celebrating music in all its forms. People are encouraged to band together and play in free public concerts in many different locations and online.
“Music making is something that resonates with people from all walks of life, all over the world,” said Australian Music Association CEO and ARIA Award winning musician Alex Masso. “Make Music Day is an opportunity to celebrate the way music making brings us together and gives us an outlet for expression, connection and so much else.”
Rock bands, songwriters, ukuleles, community bands and choirs, schools and individuals will be part of the musical offerings at Make Music Day events across Australia and online.
The City of Adelaide is cementing itself as a Make Music Day destination city. With 2025 being the 10th Anniversary of their UNESCO City of Music designation (the only designated city in Australia), they’ve organised a full Make Music Day takeover of the city, with over 200 performers playing in 40 venues from 9am to midnight.
In Victoria, Wyndham City Council has provided grants to community members to encourage and support accessible, participatory music-making activities on the day, which has resulted in a fantastically diverse range of interactive opportunities including a morning walk and sound listening experience, a community drum circle for kids and families, recording and music production sessions for emerging musicians, public piano and choir workshops and more.
“The best part of Make Music Day is that anyone can get involved”, says organiser of Make Music Day in Australia, Emma Bienvenu, Projects Officer for the Australian Music Association. “While we love to see local councils hosting large scale community events, we are equally as excited to see the smaller gatherings being planned in places like music stores and conservatoriums. All across Australia we have individual musicians and bands creating their own performance spaces in local parks, town halls and recording studios.”
Guitars Plus, a guitar store in Sandringham Victoria are hosting ‘Music of the Ages by Musicians of All Ages’, where the youngest performers will be twin girls age 7 and the oldest a solo artist, who turns 90 this year.
The Wollongong Conservatorium of Music Community Ensembles in New South Wales are celebrating with an early evening set outside Lux Bistro Bar, featuring the Curious Rendition Orchestra, a 35-piece dynamic, inclusive community band known for their spirited performances and diverse repertoire.
The City of Moreton Bay in Queensland are turning up the volume at their galleries, museums, libraries and beyond with a month-long music trail featuring free events, live performances, jam sessions, workshops, and more, with over 60 individual events planned in the lead up to and on Make Music Day.
“It’s wonderful to see the diversity in event types, as well as the participants ages, music styles and skill levels. It really is a day for everyone,” says Emma, “Whether you’re playing for a crowd or just getting together in your back yard to jam, it’s all music and it’s all worth celebrating.”
Join the celebrations this Make Music Day, Saturday June 21st.
Search for an event near you or register your own performance at makemusicaustralia.org.au.
Participate online by tagging @makemusicaustralia, or search #makemusicday to watch what’s happening around the world.
Make Music Day is presented in Australia by the Australian Music Association and the NAMM Foundation.
MAMA KIN SPENDER SHARE BEWITCHING NEW SINGLE ‘ARROWS’, ANNOUNCE NEW ALBUM ‘PROMISES’ AND ANNOUNCE ALBUM LAUNCH TOUR
A bewitching bullseye balancing soul folk, raw relatability and beguiling melodies, the new single Arrows out today from ARIA-nominated and WAM award-winning duo Mama Kin Spender tantalisingly parts the curtains further into what lies in wait on the pair’s upcoming sophomore album Promises, also announced today and set for release on Friday August 15. With the anticipated LP set to drop ahead of a special run of national album launch shows through September and October, Mama Kin Spender will be hit the road to share their new record with audiences in Pomona, Murwillumbah, Brisbane, Melbourne, Archie’s Creek, Belgrave, Sydney, Milton and Dashville.
Opening with gritty guitars, oozing harmonies and plenty of elegant swagger, Arrows evolves into a powerful yet delicate outing, wearing its heart defiantly on its sleeve as Mama Kin Spender, aka Danielle Caruana and Dingo Spender, detail bad behaviour in relationships. Also drawing inspiration from the likes of Alabama Shakes, Shovels and Rope, Liz Stringer and Pat Benatar for Danielle, as well as Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Nina Simone, The Motels and Sam & Dave for Dingo (all of which also permeate on the broader Promises album), Arrows explores, as the band puts it, “the drifting apart through small acts of carelessness, and yet somehow aching to connect. Near misses – every attempt landing awkwardly, landing wrong, lashing out, sly evasive remarks eroding the fabric of love.”
Co-writing Arrows and the entirety of Promises together, the album saw Mama Kin Spender work alongside engineer, mixer and co-producer Dan Carroll, with mastering courtesy of Lacklan Carrick. A concept album that explores love’s optimism, decay, rampage and transformation, Promises is an enchanting journey, accompanied by a primal fusion of garage, soul and folk. A roaring yet tender and vulnerable collection of songs that plunge the depths of emotion and experiences, Promises begins with today’s new single Arrows, before traversing into perky instrumentals and suggestive yet warmly relatable lyricism via Bleeding Out. From here, Mama Kin Spender weave their powerful spell over pounding percussion and raw ruminations (Promises), hazy soundscapes lined with hypnotic melodies (Desert Rain), and musing melancholia that goes down like a shot of smooth whiskey (We Are The Water). Heralding the album’s back end with potent urgency and sinuous harmonies (Dance With Me), Promisesgoes on to tug at the heartstrings with haunting, soulful beauty (A Love That Will Not Die).
“These are songs hewn from real life journeys,” shares Danielle. “Bruises, Shame, Rage, Desire, Contempt, Bad Behaviour. Death by a thousand cuts of carelessness, small unkind moments, projections, stacked up and smothering the innocence of love’s true desire – to change the very shape of us. This is a coming-of-age/coming-of-rage album. This is the doorway of the domestic debris that we accumulate, which ultimately needs to flush out to make way for who we might become as adults; real adults, responsible to ourselves and others, accountable, respectful, liberated from our child wounds and teenage tantrums.”
“The songs are essentially taking any single journal entry from the last 3 years of my love life and adding music to it,” Dingo adds. “The ending and transformation of a marriage, the pain of grief, the yearning for love, the twisted top lip of sarcasm in response to the honesty of accountability, the owning of a great many slippery truths that lay hidden in my guts, the searing, cleansing power of rage, of letting go, of accepting something I just couldn’t stand to accept… It’s basically very complicated and ornate therapy but woven into songwriting, self-expression, the joy of singing, and ultimately, the power of our friendship as we held each other through storms that were set to break us…”
Renowned for their raw, percussive energy and beguiling harmonies, Mama Kin Spender is the collaborative creative project from long-time friends and creative partners Mama Kin (Danielle Caruana) and Dingo Spender. With a stalwart reputation for songwriting that grips at your core, as well as their unforgettable live performances, Mama Kin Spender released their debut full-length album in 2018, with Golden Magnetic scoring an ARIA Award nomination for Best Blues and Roots Album. The pair have previously won Best Folk Act (2013) and Best Blues / Roots Act (2018) at the West Australian Music Industry Awards, and have also performed at the likes of WOMADelaide and Woodford Festival, Perth, Darwin and Vivid Festival, and toured across North America and Ireland and across Australia; with plenty more to come.
With the impending arrival of Promises this August, the stage will also be firmly set for an expansive new Mama Kin Spender chapter that extends beyond the new album and into the theatre. The theatre show; Promises & Wild Beasts, led by multi-award-winning director Craig Ilott, transforms the album Promises into a powerful live theatrical production; a multi-disciplinary show that will bring the album’s themes to life through live music, design, movement and storytelling. Set for an early 2026 premiere through international arts festivals, Promises & Wild Beasts is guaranteed to transcend audiences with its gripping and relatable adaptation of Promises.
“You’re gonna laugh, you’re gonna feel uncomfortable and at the same time, not alone, you’re gonna yell with us, and then most likely cry,” says Dingo of what fans can expect from the upcoming album release shows this September and October. “You’re gonna reflect on your own heart, your own little journey with love and pain and grief and happiness. You’re gonna feel elation, you’re gonna feel brave and also need a hug and a whiskey at the end.”
“We are storytellers,” adds Danielle “we mine the depths of our experiences to build the bridge of connection. Our songs are the vehicles, the embodiment of our shared experiences, joys, grief, confusion, and transformation. We seek to reach towards each other, play our hearts out, howl in harmony.”
But before Mama Kin Spender return to stages later this year, the arrival of Arrows today and the upcoming release of Promises are truly landmark moments from the pair, ultimately serving as a universal vessel for catharsis that pulses with honesty, resonant vulnerability and astonishing craftsmanship.
“It’s a relief to be putting these real and gritty songs into the world,” reveals Danielle. “Cathartic to reach from the depths of personal experiences into distilled works that will reach into other’s lives. I understand myself better because of these songs – they have been doorways through to becoming a better person, to forgiving myself, to making changes, to owning my shit, to realising the impact of promises that I made when I was too young and naive to understand what keeping them would really mean.”
“It really has been a labour of love”, Dingo concludes, “nurturing and growing these songs from strange and challenging seeds in the odd weather of the current music industry and in the dark and, at times, gritty soil of singing about things that feel uncomfortable. This album is a coming of age into the realisation and understanding of mature relationships, mature love, actually listening to love and letting it humble me in its wisdom and, at times, brutal truth. It’s a huge weight off my shoulders, to be honest.”
Arrows is out today.
Promises tour tickets are on sale today.
Promises is due out Friday August 15.
MAMA KIN SPENDER – UPCOMING ALBUM TOUR DATES:
FRI 05 SEP | MAJESTIC THEATRE, POMONA QLD
Tickets available from https://www.trybooking.com/DCRQO
SAT 06 SEP | THE CITADEL, MURWILLUMBAH NSW
Tickets available from https://events.humanitix.com/mama-kin-spender
SUN 07 SEP | LEFTY’S MUSIC HALL, BRISBANE QLD
Tickets available from https://tickets.oztix.com.au/outlet/event/3f3d0a57-6292-43f9-a87f-8f323901e9fe
FRI 12 SEP | BRUNSWICK BALLROOM, MELBOURNE VIC
Tickets available from https://moshtix.com.au/v2/event/mama-kin-spender/181349
SAT 13 SEP | ARCHIE’S CREEK TAVERN, ARCHIE’S CREEK VIC
Tickets available from https://www.trybooking.com/events/landing/1416568?embed
SUN 14 SEP | SOOKI LOUNGE, BELGRAVE VIC
Tickets available from https://sookilounge.oztix.com.au/outlet/event/8b1839a3-e2d9-4cd4-93f5-bd67b48ae868
FRI 03 OCT | PADDINGTON UNITING CHURCH, SYDNEY NSW
Tickets available from https://tickets.oztix.com.au/outlet/event/0ade135c-14c9-47b4-9f15-b461f0d88f84
SAT 04 OCT | MILTON THEATRE, MILTON NSW
Tickets available from https://www.stickytickets.com.au/uz0rr/mama_kin_spender.aspx
SUN 05 OCT | DASHVILLE SKYLINE, DASHVILLE NSW
Tickets available from https://www.dashville.com.au/dashvilleskyline
THE CORONAS ANNOUNCE 2025 AUSTRALIAN TOUR SET TO RETURN DOWN UNDER THIS NOVEMBER
In 2025, fourth time’s the charm for Dublin’s The Coronas, with the beloved rock trio set to return down under for a fourth year in a row this November. Gearing up to visit Melbourne, Sydney and Perth later this year, prepare to once again fall head-over-heels with the energetic and magnetic stylings of The Coronas in a live setting, with plenty of new and old favourites in store.
Tickets for The Coronas’ upcoming Australian tour go onsale to the general public on Friday 13 June at 10am local time from https://thecoronas.net/. Fans can register for presale tickets now from https://troubadourpresents.com/events/the-coronas, with a 24 hour presale kicking off at 10am Thursday 12 June.
“Honestly it’s one of my favourite places in the world to tour,” says The Coronas lead vocalist Danny O’Reilly of returning to Australia for a fourth year in a row. “It reminds me of home in a certain way. The Aussies know how to have fun, a bit like the Irish. My favourite thing about touring Australia is the people; the coffee; the weather; the breakfasts; the atmosphere at the shows – I guess that’s the people again. We’ve been so welcomed in Aus every time we’ve played there. We can’t wait!”
“The expats love to make themselves seen (and heard!) at the shows,” adds Danny. “They’ve no shame, Irish flag waving, shouting at the top of their lungs like they’re out for the first and last time ever! The Aussies at our shows still know how to have fun but they’re a bit cooler and understated.”
Named for the typewriter used by protagonist William Miller in the 2000 flick Almost Famous, The Coronas have been charming crowds across the world for decades, with the trio’s original brew of inspirations drawn from The Beatles and The Stone Roses ultimately paving the way for the eventual signature Coronas sound, announced via their 2006 debut EP The Coronas EP. Swiftly garnering attention, the group went on to take Ireland’s indie scene by storm via a run of sold-out shows in Dublin, and went on to make chart history as the only independent Irish band to claim four consecutive chart-topping albums, while also ticking off supporting Bruce Springsteen in Hyde Park, playing for then-President Joe Biden, and taking out the Hot Press #1 Live Act of the Year Award.
In the studio, The Coronas have released seven full-length albums to date, spanning their acclaimed 2007 debut LP Heroes or Ghosts through to their most recent opus, 2024’s Thoughts & Observations, with the latter cementing a fourth consecutive #1 album for the trio. And between their trademark energetic live performances internationally and their ongoing love affair with Australian audiences, The Coronas have also previously shared stages alongside the likes of Kaiser Chiefs, The Kooks and Ellie Goulding, with an upcoming performance later this month at Glastonbury Festival along with The 1975, Olivia Rodrigo, Rod Stewart and many more.
“The set is gonna be a little different for sure,” shares Danny of what Aussie fans can expect this November. “We’ve been on the road now a lot of this year already, around Europe and we’re just about to start a UK tour then we’ll be off to the US and Canada for a tour in July, so we should have the show pretty tight by our Australian tour. There’s gonna be a mixture of newer stuff and some old Coronas songs but loads of energy and good vibes.”
And with back-to-back Australian visits as well as back-to-back chart topping album releases of late, The Coronas absolutely aren’t slowing down anytime soon, as Danny concludes, “We’ve just started work on our next record, it’s exciting to be back writing new material. I imagine we will keep writing in between all our touring this year and try record early next year! That’s the plan.”
Tickets for The Coronas’ upcoming Australian tour go onsale to the general public on Friday 13 June at 10am local time from https://thecoronas.net/.
THE CORONAS – UPCOMING AUSTRALIAN TOUR DATES:
FRI 21 NOV | PRINCE BANDROOM, MELBOURNE VIC | 18+
Tickets available from www.oztix.com.au | 1300 762 545 | All Oztix Outlets
SAT 22 NOV | ROUNDHOUSE, SYDNEY NSW | 18+
Tickets available from www.moshtix.com.au | 1300 GET TIX | All Moshtix Outlets
SUN 23 NOV | MAGNET HOUSE, PERTH WA | 18+
Tickets available from www.oztix.com.au | 1300 762 545 | All Oztix Outlets