June 21: Garden of Memory Celebrates 30th Anniversary – Presented by New Music Bay Area and Chapel of the Chimes
Clockwise - Majel Connery with Jonathan Vinocur, Wendy Reid's ensemble with Lulu the parrot, FreeHorn, and the crowd
Garden of Memory Celebrates 30th Anniversary
Bay Area Commemorates Summer Solstice on June 21
Presented by New Music Bay Area and Chapel of the Chimes
Bringing Together Bay Area Performers and Composers
on the Longest Day of the Year
Sunday, June 21, 2026, 5-9pm
Chapel of the Chimes | 4499 Piedmont Avenue | Oakland, CA
Parking is limited. Public transit and carpooling are recommended.
Tickets ($20 General, $15 Students & Seniors, Children 12 and under: Free Admission)
Available through Eventbrite
No tickets sales on-site; online sales only; Limited to 3000 Tickets
More information: www.gardenofmemory.com
Oakland, CA – New Music Bay Area and Chapel of the Chimes are thrilled to announce the return of the Garden of Memory for 2026, commemorating the 30th anniversary since its launch in 1996. On Sunday, June 21, 2026, an abundance of music returns to the Chapel of the Chimes (4499 Piedmont Avenue), kicking off the summer season, celebrating the longest day of the year, and celebrating Father’s Day, all together in one afternoon bursting with camaraderie and creativity. Tickets, which will be available through online sales only, are limited to 3000. There is no waitlist.
Since 1996, New Music Bay Area, a nonprofit organization which provides opportunities and information to composers and performers of new music throughout the Bay Area, has hosted the Garden of Memory solstice concert every year on June 21. Board president and Bay Area-based pianist Sarah Cahill came up with the idea after wandering into the Chapel of the Chimes, and now Cahill and fellow board member Lucy Farber Mattingly organize the concert each year, in collaboration with the small board of New Music Bay Area and the Chapel of the Chimes.
Described by the San Francisco Chronicle as "a walk-through fun house of musical and visual splendor" and by the East Bay Times as “the best party of the year,” this highly anticipated and routinely sold-out solstice event features an abundance of performances that take place over the course of the day with no strict performance times. Those in attendance can walk anywhere throughout the stunning grounds of the Chapel of the Chimes and see composers, musicians, sound artists, and other performers presenting an awe-inspiring potpourri of performances –solo, group, acoustic, and electronic – sound installations, and interactive demonstrations. Listeners are encouraged to roam around the multilevel labyrinth of the iconic columbarium’s interior gardens, cloisters, stairwells, fountains, alcoves, pools, and antechambers during the performances and see as many artists as they like. Artists are performing in every available space, meaning that everyone’s journey through the many performances can be truly a unique musical experience.
“As I meandered around the [columbarium], I heard distant organ music, and tried to follow the sound to its source, through a labyrinth of magical gardens and gothic alcoves with the afternoon light filtering through stained glass,” says Sarah Cahill. “I imagined putting musicians all around this maze, so that when you turn a corner you might encounter a string quartet or an electronic music installation or a Georgian choir. So that's what we did.”
Highlights of this year’s performers and programming include:
Sarah Cahill, a pianist and champion of new music who NPR Music describes as “command[ing] a near godlike status among fans of contemporary classical music,” has commissioned and premiered over seventy compositions for solo piano. As part of this year’s Garden of Memory, Cahill will collaborate with mezzo-soprano Sylvie Jensen, performing Gotham Lullaby and Prayer II by Meredith Monk, as well as Let the Letter Read You and From Cabin in the Rockies by Philip Glass, What Shall I Sing by Errollyn Wallen, and Menashe Songs –– Transplant, Downpour, and The Shrine Whose Shape I Am –– by Benjamin Yarmolinsky.
Melike Yersiz is a Turkish composer. She will perform a project called The Organism, an ambient electroacoustic sound installation continually morphs in response to audience participation. The Organism will generate an ambient soundscape for the full duration of the performance. Passers-by can or simply enjoy the subtly shifting, soothing sounds of the installations or come up to stations at the table and play with everyday objects like bells, rubber mallets, tuning forks, and other items, which will trigger various changes in the soundscape.
Bevin Blectum is an electronic musician and multimedia composer. She will be using a laptop, a Moog sub 37, a hydra-synth explorer, and a Teenage Engineering KO II sampler to respond to the environment and create sound meditations.
Joseph Bohigian will present his interactive sound installation Stone Dreams, which features a large stone hooked up to a contact microphone that visitors can touch to trigger fragments of Armenian folk songs collected from genocide survivors in the US in the 1930s. These folk song fragments are combined with processed recordings of scraping stones. The installation puts forth the following questions: How is memory preserved when physical sites of memory are destroyed? When collective memory is separated from a place, how can it be revived in a new context?
Additional artists confirmed to perform this year, many of whom are known in and around the Bay Area, include:
John Benson, Blevin Blectum, Joseph Bohigian, George Brooks and Utsav Lal, Sidney Chen, Majel Connery and Felix Fan, The Cornelius Cardew Choir, The Dennis Aman / Andy Meyerson Problem, Dresher Davel Invented Instrument Duo, christopher robin Duncan, duo B., Esotérica Tropical, Euphotic - Cheryl Leonard, Bryan Day, Tom Djll, Agnes Evon, Gautam Tejas Ganeshan, Philip Gelb, Gliss Glass & Gongs: Krys Bobrowski & Karen Stackpole, Harmonic Drift, Anne Hege, Barbara Nerness, and Celeste Betancur Gutierrez, Liam Herb, Karlton Hester and Valerie Mih, Brenda Hutchinson and the dailybell Ensemble, Silvie Jensen and Sarah Cahill, Joel St. Julien, Kitka, Dylan Mattingly, Matt McBane and Ian Dicke, MoToR/dance, The Mycos Project, Orchestra Nostalgico Reboot, Robin Petrie/Shira Kammen/Peter Maund/Shelley Phillips, Plonsey Scheme, Randy Porter, Rova Sax Quartet, Sruti Sarathy, Sentimental Vvore made up of Xxhe and friends, SoRIAH with Thomas Dimuzio, Thingamajigs Performance Group, Trance Mission Duo: Beth Custer & Stephen Kent, William Winant/Chris Brown/Robert Lopez, Theresa Wong and Roco Córdova, Melike Yersiz, Pamela Z, Evan Ziporyn and Christine Southworth.
Garden of Memory offers a unique and personal musical experience to every listener roving freely through the Chapel of the Chimes. Getting lost is part of the experience as guests climb up and down the three floors of this Oakland Historic Landmark building and its unique architectural elements, which rise into vaulted ceilings. Seamless in feel, there are three separate design sections created by four architects; Cunningham & Politeo 1909, Julia Morgan 1926-1951 (consulting until her retirement 1951), Aaron Green 1956-1986 and JST Architects 1986-1998. In the older section the complexity of chapels, columbaria, and mausoleum areas are adorned with murals, paintings, sculpture, mosaics, California tile and 16th century antiquities. All architectural and garden areas have excellent acoustics and are illuminated by gentle natural light, often through beautiful arrangements of stained glass.
Drawing crowds of over four thousand people in past years (including a large number of children), Garden of Memory has become a favorite summer solstice celebration for Bay Area audiences. Information about performances, directions, parking, accessibility, food/beverage, and is available at www.gardenofmemory.com.
Chapel of the Chimes, the largest above-ground cemetery west of the Mississippi, started out as a street car station and became the California Memorial Crematorium and Columbarium in 1909. The property was expanded and transformed by Julia Morgan and later, Aaron Green – a protégé of Frank Lloyd Wright. The lobby and hallways feature artwork by Diego Rivera, a marble table top from the Medici family crest and a page from the Gutenberg Bible.
The facility’s numerous chapels, columbaria, and mausoleum areas are adorned with antiquities that date back to the 16th century. All architectural and garden areas have excellent acoustics and are illuminated by gentle natural light, often through beautiful arrangements of stained glass.