Upcoming Events

SO excited to bring the Sugar Bush Sound Garden to an actual Sugar Bush Maple Syrup Open House event at Wild River State Park, as part of composer JG Everest’s 2025 Artist Residency at Wild River! Free and Family Friendly!

PAST EVENTS:
2024

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Join us for a very special Nighttime Luminary Sound Garden at Crosby Farm Regional Park, with bonfire, guided nature walks, and live performers accompanying the Sound Garden on the banks of the Mississippie River. FREE & Family-Friendly.
The Fall Sound Garden returns to the expansive wooded trails and open spaces at Caponi Art Park for two days, Sept 14 & 15, 2024, with two different days of programming and a series of free companion Art + Nature workshops in the weeks leading up to the event. (Click here for more info & to register)
We’re thrilled to partner with HeartSpace Garden and the East Phillips Improvement Coalition (EPIC) to bring our pop-up Summer Sound Garden back to this special greenspace in the heart of the East Phillips neighborhood in South Minneapolis. With featured poetry readings, live musical performances, light refreshments, and creative and healing spaces throughout the afternoon.
Join us on the sacred banks of the Mississippi River in a luminary Sound Garden at Crosby Farm Regional Park, amongst the towering Cottonwoods, for a bonfire and s’smores. Co-presented by Mississippi Park Connection, the National Parks Service, and St Paul Parks. FREE!
The SUMMER SOUND GARDEN returns to the magical island in Silver Lake at Silverwood Park, where it premiered in 2018! Expanded to include 50+ speakers, each playing a different part of the whole piece of music, with live roving movement scores by 5 dancers, site-specific poetry, and a summer song by Blue Lady and the Free Range Orchestra & Choir. CLICK HERE for more info and to register.
Join acclaimed poets and teaching artists Chavonn Shen and Teresa Ortiz for an outdoor, site-specific Poetry + Nature writing workshop at Silverwood Park, creating new works for the Summer Sound Garden at Silverwood Park on Sat June 29th. (see below)
We’re thrilled to be bringing the Library Woods Sound Garden back to La Pointe for two days over Memorial Day weekend again! Free and Family Friendly as always!
The Sugar Bush Sound Garden returns to Wargo for a special Earth Day celebration, featuring Blue Lady and the Free Range Orchestra & Choir, a live movement score by dancers Erika Hansen, Sarah Baumert, and Suzette Gilreath, and a Dakota Language Scavenger Hunt facilitated by poet / storyteller Lisa Yankton. FREE & Family Friendly.

2023

The self-guided, site-specific Fall Sound Garden migrates to a new site, a several miles upstream on Rice Creek from where it premiered in 2018 at Manomin Park in Fridley. Featuring live roving dancers and musical accompaniment by the Free Range Orchestra & Choir, and live storytelling by Lisa Yankton. Part of Wargo Nature Center’s annual Fall Fest, featuring a cider press, storybook trail, and a Dakota Language scavenger hunt. Family-friendly.
We return to HeartSpace Garden in East Phillips for a free neighborhoood pop-up Summer Sound Garden featuring live poetry by Lisa Yankton, Tim Blighton, Louise Waakaa’igan, and Barbara Currin, as well as Blue Lady and her choir singing her summer song, “Soakin’ It In” with the Free Range Orchestra. Plus chalk art, lemonade, and snack
The LOLA Sound Garden returns to Land O’ Lakes, Wisconsin for three days in June, with five free onsite community Art & Nature workshops leading up to the events. Click here for more info or to register.
The 2-day premiere of a new site-specific sound + performance installation for the Library Woods and gazebo at the Madeline Island Library in LaPointe, WI.
The Akiing Sugar Bush Sound Garden travels to the MN Grove greenspace in the the DogPatch neighborhood of San Francisco for a special 1-day pop-up event. Presented as part of the Museum of Craft & Design’s MakeArt Family Day event.
A brand new 2-day Sound Garden for the wooded grounds at the Montalvo Arts Center in Saratoga, California for Earth Day, 2023. FREE and Family Friendly.
Join us for a Winter Sound Garden at HeartSpace Garden in the East Phillips neighborhood of south Minneapolis, featuring Blue Lady and the Free Range Orchestra & Choir, with live poetry and storytelling, bonfires, luminaries, and warm beverages. Free and family friendly!

2022

It’s our annual fundraiser! You can support our innovative community arts programming by donating in any amount to help enable us to continue offering all our programs for free. click here
The Fall Sound Garden comes to Texa-Tonka Park and Victoria Lake, along the North Cedar Lake Trail in St Louis Park, with free outdoor onsite community Art + Nature workshops leading up to the event on Sept 24 and Oct 1.
Our First Sound Garden at the new HeartSpace Garden in the East Phillips Neighborhood of South Minneapolis, featuring pollinator gardens, sidewalk chalk art murals, and group sing-alongs with Blue Lady and the Free Range Orchestra & Choir.
We return to historic Land O Lakes Wisconsin to re-mount an expanded version of the site-specific LOLA Sound Garden, for three separate days of events celebrating Make Music Day. Listen to an interview with composer JG Everest here. Click HERE for more event info.
Join us on Saturday May 14 at historic Riverside Park, the oldest city park in Minneapolis, for an all-new site-specific sound + performance installation with community-sourced poetry, murals, and sculpture elements created in a series of free, outdoor community Art + Nature workshops held onsite at Riverside Park in the weeks prior. Reserve your spots here.
Join us for an all-new Earth Day Sound Garden at the Wargo Nature Center in Lino Lakes, MN, featuring Blue Lady and her Love Butterflies, and the live musical accompaniment by the roving Free Range Orchestra & Choir. FREE.
**POSTPONED FROM JANUARY 22** Join us for the last of our four outdoor “pop-up” seasonal Sound Gardens in Minneapolis over the past year – limited capacity, reservations required. Featuring live site-specific dance, music, visual art and poetry, and a 60+-channel spatial sound installation. The first time the complete Water Suite (all four seasons) has been presented in the same year in one city. Part of our ongoing iNMiGRATiON series.
click here for more info and photo galleries from the events.

2021

Join us for the third of four outdoor “pop-up” seasonal Sound Gardens in Minneapolis in 2021 – limited capacity, reservations required. Featuring live site-specific dance, music, visual art and poetry, and a 40-channel spatial sound installation. The first time the complete Water Suite (all four seasons) will be presented in the same year in one city. Part of our ongoing iNMiGRATiON series.
click here for more info and photo galleries from the events.
The premiere of composer JG Everest’s brand new site-specific performance installation, a new Sound Garden composed and designed specifically for the wooded Geer Island at the Prairie Woods Environmental Learning Center in Spicer, MN. A truly immersive art + nature experience in a pristine nature preserve. Admission is free and camping is available at Sibley State Park, a 10-minute drive away. (reserve your sites soon) Featuring a live roving movement score by dancers Leslie O’Neill, Sarah Baumert, and Erika Hansen, with live accompaniment by the Free Range Orchestra & Choir and more.
Join us for the second of four outdoor “pop-up” seasonal Sound Gardens in Minneapolis in 2021 – limited capacity, reservations required. Featuring live site-specific dance, music, visual art and poetry, and a 40-channel spatial sound installation. The first time the complete Water Suite (all four seasons) will be presented in the same year in one city. Part of our ongoing iNMiGRATiON series.
click here for more info and photo galleries from the events.
To celebrate the 15-Year Anniversary of Harbor Park, we are re-mounting the live 40-channel sound + performance installation at Harbor Park in Grand Marais, MN on the north shore of Lake Superior for two days over Memorial Day weekend, part of the Art Along The Lake festival. Presented by Wavelets Creative in partnership with the Cook County History Museum, Visit Cook County, and the City of Grand Marais, with funding from the MN State Arts Board’s Arts Touring program. CLICK HERE if you are interested in volunteering to help out as a greeter at our Spring Sound Garden event at Harbor Park in Grand Marais, May 29 & 30
The roving iNMiGRATiON series returns for a special outdoor spring celebration at the Cedar Riverside People’s Center on the West Bank in Minneapolis, featuring two live sets by Sans Le Systeme, live poetry, dance, sidewalk chalk art murals, food, and the Free Range Orchestra. FREE!
Join us for the first of four outdoor “pop-up” seasonal Sound Gardens in Minneapolis in 2021 – limited capacity, reservations required. Featuring live site-specific dance, music, visual art and poetry, and a 40-channel spatial sound installation. The first time the complete Water Suite (all four seasons) will be presented in the same year in one city. Part of our ongoing iNMiGRATiON series.
click here for more info and to reserve your spot.
NOW STREAMING: The new Fall Sound Garden at Riverside Park film, a 1-hour POV experience moving through layers of dance, music, poetry, and nature at our Fall Sound Garden event in Fall 2020, part of the “Because Your Health Matters” initiative, in partnership with the Cedar Riverside People’s Center, an historic community health and wellness clinic in south Minneapolis.

2020

 

2019

2018

2017

Monarch Magic! community art + nature workshops at Lake Nokomis Park and Sound + Performance installation at the Annual Minneapolis Monarch Festival / Festival de la Monarcha
iNMiGRATiON at Northern Spark 2017 at Union Station
The Buffalo Show indigenous artists showcase at the Bryant Lake Bowl with Oyate Hotanin and Pangea World Theater

2016