Millbrook Rotarian Joyce Heaton describes this year’s New Year’s Eve Millbrook a community event that is family friendly and alcohol free. Twelve years earlier, the Rotary Club of Millbrook was seeking a way to help bring the village and environs together as a community. In October of that year, Joyce—who was aware of First Night Celebrations in Boston and elsewhere—proposed that the club sponsor a New Year’s Eve celebration of music and events directed at children. That December saw the first celebration. Some of the music acts from that first occasion—jazz pianist Larry Ham and the Handman Family strings—have been featured every year since, while other popular favorites such as the Bindlestiff Family Cirkus, Metropolitan Klezmer, and ragtime-and-blues piano scholar Peter Muir, have been present many times. A popular feature of New Year’s Eve Millbrook are the lighted buttons designed by local students.
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