Make Music Cambridge Co-founder

Alexis Berthier

By SCOTT SAYARE

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Sipping a drink at a chic Newbury Street café, sporting pinstripes, rimless glasses and square-toed shoes, Alexis Berthier, co-founder of the Make Music Cambridge festival, might come off a bit serious. But ask the French-native about politics, travel, most anything, really, and he'll lean in, tap his knee and speak with an earnestness that is quite notably un-Boston.

"There is one thing that I don't like," he says. "People who put themselves in boxes."

It's with this signature enthusiasm and desire to force people out of those "boxes" that inspired Berthier and a few other local français transplants to create Make Music Cambridge, a free festival that brought 75 local musicians to the street corners of Harvard Square on June 21st.

"It's really at the corner of the street, that's the idea," he says. The festival had no vendors or stages, just lots of music, from glass harmonica to Britpop, classical flute to Brazilian drums.

Berthier—who is also the press and public affairs attaché for Boston's French Consulate General—is not a musician; he says he just wanted to get people to slow down, to "get out of their plans," as he puts it.

Although he concedes that Cambridge is "a place where people are quite open-minded," he says Americans don't characteristically "take your time and enjoy the time you take." So he worried the street festival concept might not fly on this side of the Atlantic. But, he says with a smile, "People actually stopped."

Make Music Cambridge is Boston's first street music festival, modeled on France's annual Fête de la Musique. France's event has grown into a global phenomenon since its modest start on the sidewalks of Paris in 1982; this year, Cambridge joined more than 300 participating cities in over 100 countries.

Berthier says putting on the festival was more work than expected. "In Europe, you just get down on the street, put your stuff on the street corner," he explains. "Here, it's much more structured. You need permits, you need agreements ...We had a big learning curve."

But musicians, festival-goers and local business owners alike were enthusiastic, and Berthier is committed to making the festival an annual affair.

"Maybe I'm just idealistic," he says. "I just like the idea of sharing the thing."

[makemusiccambridge.com]