People in Plazas (PiP) is a non-profit music presenter
that promotes the artistic and economic development of
San Francisco’s live-music field. Originally founded in
1973 as the Market Street Association (MSA), PiP has

presented live music concerts in 35+ public plazas, parks
and spaces in the downtown San Francisco for the past
50 years; these events have provided paid performance
opportunities to approximately 25,000 musicians.
In 2019, the last full year before COVID arrived, PiP
produced more than 135 free live concerts in fifteen
different venues on or near Market Street from the
Embarcadero to the Castro Street Trolly turnaround.
After two years of COVID restrictions prohibiting large
gatherings, we significantly reduced our 2020 and 2021
performances. In FY2022-23 we plan to resume our
previous level of programming by staging free outdoors
concerts to an estimated 30,000 office workers, residents
and tourists in downtown San Francisco.
These concerts, which will take place every weekday
in July, August and September 2022, will present a wide
range of genres and music styles, including traditional
ethnic music, rock and roll, hip-hop, blues, Latin jazz,
experimental and computer-generated sound. Many of
the presented ensembles are led by women and artists of
color; many participating musicians perform their original
compositions.