Every year, Sarah Cahill and New Music Bay Area’s Garden of Memory concert offers a special way to celebrate summer: A music experience at the Columbarium of the Chapel of the Chimes in Oakland, whose special acoustic properties allow separate performances in different niches and spaces to go on simultaneously without the sound carrying far. You wander about picking up music here and there and stumbling upon performances by some of the Bay Area’s adventurous and eclectic musicians. The event draws more than a thousand spectators every year.
In addition to the musicians who are regulars, like vocalist Amy X. Neuburg and Cahill herself, for example, you also find the unexpected: would you have imagined a koto player partnering with a saxophonist? What about a nine-piece big band that specializes in the film music of Nino Rota and his contemporaries? What about a shakuhachi (Japanese flute) player? A former member of Bobby McFerrin’s Voicestra who blends jazz and North Indian raga in complex vocal improvisations? It’s wild, woolly, and an unmissable event.