Oakland: See an experimental-music festival in a Julia Morgan columbarium

The Garden of Memory experimental-music festival celebrates its 30th anniversary on the Summer Solstice at Oakland's Chapel of the Chimes, a columbarium designed by Julia Morgan. Dozens of experimental musicians perform among funerary urns and stained glass, with visitors free to wander through the maze-like building. Highlights include a vibrating milk drum, an audience-reactive electroacoustic generator, and a stone that triggers Armenian folk songs.

Getting your Trinity Audio //trinityaudio.ai player ready...Ever see a musician extracting freaky beats from a drum of vibrating milk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=glmZEFeHVQg while surrounded by thousands of funerary urns? If not, you’ve been missing out on one of the Bay Area’s strangest music fests https://www.mercurynews.com/things-to-do/music/ , the Garden of Memory https://gardenofmemory.com/performers/ , now celebrating its 30th anniversary. Taking place on the Summer Solstice at the Chapel of the Chimes in Oakland, the event gathers dozens of the world’s preeminent experimental musicians to perform in a stunning columbarium designed by Julia Morgan https://www.mercurynews.com/2025/07/11/her-way-julia-morgan-the-quiet-genius-who-defined-bay-area-architecture/ . 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’t enjoy one artist, simply move on randomly through the building’s maze; getting literally lost in the music is part of the fun. Among this year’s performances is a mezzo-soprano and a pianist dueting Meredith Monk and Philip Glass, an audience-reactive electroacoustic generator called “The Organism” and a “large stone hooked up to a contact microphone that visitors can touch to trigger fragments of Armenian folk songs collected from genocide survivors.” You better believe that John Benson’s “Vibrating Milk” will be there, as always, and as for the person who performs with her pet parrot Lulu https://treepieces.net/ – you’ll just have to visit and see. 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 , https://gardenofmemory.com https://gardenofmemory.com