The annual Garden of Memory summer solstice concert has and continues to be transformational ever since pianist Sarah Cahill launched it in 1995.
Held at the foot of North Oakland’s Piedmont Avenue in the Chapel of the Chimes, an above-ground crematorium and columbarium, the event hosted since 1996 by New Music Bay Area fills the property’s chapel, vestibules, stairways, niches, hallways, gardens and courtyard with glorious contemporary music (visit gardenofmemory.com/about online for full concert details and history).
The walk-through event — held yearly on June 21 to be on or near the summer solstice — invites visitors to self-curate their experience as top-level local, national and international musicians and groups perform continuously. The one exception is in the chapel, where programming presents performers sequentially.
Cahill says people not among the lucky 3,000 holders of tickets that have already sold out can enjoy food trucks just outside the main entrance along with the musical group Harmonic Drift, who will perform on their homemade instruments.
In 2025, the list of artists includes new faces but, also and importantly, multiple returning musicians and troupes such as Cahill; vocalist-composer Majel Connery with San Francisco Symphony principal violist Jonathan Vinocour; Pamela Z, Anne Hege, Edward Schocker, Kitka, Wendy Reid, Lulu & the Bird Ensemble and more. The prestigious roster and the fact that the event consistently sells out within days of tickets going on sale make Garden of Memory’s ongoing relevance and popularity evident.
The aformentioned Connery, a versatile composer, vocalist and educator with an A.B. (bachelor’s) degree in music from Princeton and a Ph.D. in musicology from the University of Chicago, will perform her “Elderflora” project and celebrate the release of her concert album, “The Rivers are our Brothers” (majelconnery.com/rivers-are-our-brothers).
“Chapel of the Chimes is where my ‘Rivers’ song cycle was born,” Connery said in a recent interview. “There are already two album versions of it that are unusual and lovely, but as a composer I try one version, then another, until I get the definitive one. For me, ‘Rivers’ came together when I played it there with (Cellist) Felix Fan in 2022. It’s the version closest to my heart, and the chapel is the ideal place to release it.”
Connery says the chapel’s solstice concerts have largely shaped her identity and goals as a performing artist.
“The event is unique because the audience is empowered to partner with musicians,” she says. “It’s an energized transaction. Audiences in the space are experimental partners: I make eye contact with people who wave, smile, cry, sit with me for four hours or sit, leave, return.
“There’s no other experience where I can see people experience the same piece over and over and see how they react to it. The music grows on them. It’s an incredible opportunity to see what lands and what bounces. It’s like a testing ground. ‘Rivers’ was like that, and the first, piecemeal version I did of ‘Elderflora’ was also.”
“Elderflora” paints 10 musical portraits in an oratorio about the life and death of a tree (majelconnery.com/elderflora). The score weaves an organic tapestry composed and performed with cutting-edge tech tools and software that references madrigals and hymns while offering original electronically created soundscapes in which wind, fire, water and the tree’s “voice” during multiple phases of life can be heard. Connery recalls the work’s premiere last September with the Seattle Symphony.
“They have an experimental state-of-the-art space with a Meyer Sound system called ‘Octave 9.’ We did two back-to-back shows,” she says. “There were people who laid down on the floor and just had an auditory, physical experience during the entire show.
“That was an amazing thing to witness, that music could take people to this place. Folks came up afterwards in tears and explained they knew exactly what I was doing. Taking people inside the mind of a tree turned out to not be a massive spiritual leap.”
Her concerns about a work taking people on a journey into the thoughts and spiritual life of a tree being “woo-woo” vanished.
“I think it’s exactly the right moment in time for people wanting that kind of challenge. People are keenly aware of the disappearance of the natural world. It takes no arm-twisting to take audiences to this place of receptivity.”
Connery says those performances and others have confirmed for that her positions about nature and ecology are neither unusual nor over-the-top. She recalls her active imagination during childhood causing her to believe the natural world had physical eyes and ears, feelings and thoughts.
‘I’ve learned it’s a good — possibly the only — empathetic position that will shift us out of the logistical, scientific problem-solving view of the environment to ideas that come from feeling, imagination.”
Connery emphasizes that Jonathan Vinocour, a longtime friend and associate who has performed with her since her college years, is especially suited for “Elderflora.”
“Jon feels music at an astonishingly intimate and detailed level,” she says. “He’s never been afraid to show that. He breathes in a manner that’s revealing and never rote. Even in rehearsal, he treats each phrase like it’s the most beautiful in the world.”
She says rehearsals are a joy and inspire her to bring similar vulnerability to the stage. For both performers, “Elderflora” demands unabashed commitment.
“It requires complete dedication to the piece’s mission: taking people into the world of a tree. There can’t be hesitation or the thought, ‘Is this goofy? Too childish?’ If that comes up, it’s ruined. Collaborators have to go with me to that place of a child’s tale — living and dying as a tree — for us to take the audience to that place.”
Connery is on tour more than most performing musicians, partly out of necessity — her former home base in the Bay Area is increasingly unaffordable for many musicians and other artists. Currently touring with an Australian band who has access to grants she will never have, they ask, “New album? Travel expenses? Why can’t you just apply for a grant?”
“They don’t understand our reality, Connery says. “For as long as I remember, if I wanted to do something, it was up to me. Even with a government grant for a project, it’s likely only 20% of the expense and the rest is private support.”
That leaves Connery and other performers in the Bay Area unsure of the future but enormously appreciative for the Garden of Memory summer solstice concert at the Chapel of the Chimes. “We can survive in a black-and-white world without art, but without color, would you even want to live?” she asks. “Art is joy, beauty, happiness. Artists are in positions to fight for art, for color.”
Lou Fancher is a freelance writer. Reach her at lou@johnsonandfancher.com.