{"id":364256,"date":"2026-06-17T14:13:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-17T14:13:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/364256\/"},"modified":"2026-06-17T14:13:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-17T14:13:09","slug":"bay-area-music-the-garden-of-memory-experimental-music-fest-in-oakland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/364256\/","title":{"rendered":"Bay Area music: The Garden of Memory experimental-music fest in Oakland"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Ever see a musician extracting freaky beats from a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=glmZEFeHVQg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">drum of vibrating milk<\/a> while surrounded by thousands of funerary urns? If not, you\u2019ve been missing out on one of the Bay Area\u2019s strangest <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mercurynews.com\/things-to-do\/music\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">music fests<\/a>, the <a href=\"https:\/\/gardenofmemory.com\/performers\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">Garden of Memory<\/a>, now celebrating its 30th anniversary.<\/p>\n<p>Taking place on the Summer Solstice at the Chapel of the Chimes in Oakland, the event gathers dozens of the world\u2019s preeminent experimental musicians to perform in a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mercurynews.com\/2025\/07\/11\/her-way-julia-morgan-the-quiet-genius-who-defined-bay-area-architecture\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">stunning columbarium designed by Julia Morgan<\/a>. Visitors stroll from room to room, surrounded by stained glass and sacred cremains, serving witness to moving and often head-scratching performances. If you don\u2019t enjoy one artist, simply move on randomly through the building\u2019s maze; getting literally lost in the music is part of the fun.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" lazyautosizes lazyload\" alt=\"The Garden of Memory experimental-music festival takes place June 21, 2026, at the Chapel of the Chimes in Oakland, Calif. Pictured: Aurora Josephson and Wendy Reid with Lulu the parrot. (Lucy Mattingly)\" width=\"1350\" data- src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/SJM-L-GOODTIMES-0617-01.jpeg\" data-attachment-id=\"12914078\" \/>The Garden of Memory experimental-music festival takes place June 21, 2026, at the Chapel of the Chimes in Oakland, Calif. Pictured: Aurora Josephson and Wendy Reid with Lulu the parrot. (Lucy Mattingly)\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Among this year\u2019s performances is a mezzo-soprano and a pianist dueting Meredith Monk and Philip Glass, an audience-reactive electroacoustic generator called \u201cThe Organism\u201d and a \u201clarge stone hooked up to a contact microphone that visitors can touch to trigger fragments of Armenian folk songs collected from genocide survivors.\u201d You better believe that John Benson\u2019s \u201cVibrating Milk\u201d will be there, as always, and as for the person who <a href=\"https:\/\/treepieces.net\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">performs with her pet parrot Lulu<\/a> \u2013 you\u2019ll just have to visit and see.<\/p>\n<p>Details: 5-9 p.m. June 21 at 4499 Piedmont Ave., Oakland; $20 general admission with online-sales only (no tickets at the door, free for children 12 and under), <a href=\"https:\/\/gardenofmemory.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">https:\/\/gardenofmemory.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ever see a musician extracting freaky beats from a drum of vibrating milk while surrounded by thousands of&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":364257,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[147918,143,145,144],"class_list":["post-364256","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-bay-area-music-the-garden-of-memory-experimental-music-fest-in-oakland-festival-classical-chapel-of-the-chimes-walk-tour-visit-2026","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/364256","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=364256"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/364256\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/364257"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=364256"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=364256"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=364256"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}