After Hours Garden Sound Bath for Peace at Innisfree

Saturday, August 22, 5:30–6:30pm (rain date September 5) | Millbrook, NY

Innisfree Garden hosts a "Sound Bath for Peace" with Ben Brown after the garden closes to regular visitors August 22. The evening program built around the ancient therapeutic practice of deep listening. Brown will create an immersive soundscape using a range of instruments alongside the natural acoustics and resonance of the garden itself, with participants lying down or sitting to focus on listening as a way of reaching a relaxed, heightened state of awareness.

No prior experience with meditation or yoga is needed. Participants should bring a yoga mat, blanket, or folding chair and water, and are urged to arrive before 5pm to check in and settle before things begin.

The gathering is held in honor of the United Nations International Day of Peace, and as part of the continent-wide Gardens for Peace program run by the North American Japanese Garden Association. Innisfree's landscape architect, Lester Collins, spent more than five decades developing the 185-acre garden, working from 1938 until his death in 1993, drawing on his study of Chinese and Japanese garden traditions and his Quaker background. He originally collaborated with Walter and Marion Beck, who had begun the property in the late 1920s after Walter, a painter, discovered scroll paintings by the eighth-century Chinese poet Wang Wei and set out to build a garden of individually composed scenes around Innisfree's glacial lake.

Architect Charles Moore once wrote that Collins addressed a question most designers overlook: how to shape a human environment around the things people of every culture share—peace, awareness, and beauty. The sound bath is framed as an extension of that same intention, using Innisfree's design to help participants experience rather than simply consider what peace might mean.

Brown is a sound practitioner, visual artist, and New York State-licensed massage therapist. He co-created Beauty Medicine, an interdisciplinary sound art project blending field recordings, electro-acoustic composition, and poetry, and co-founded HOME, a virtual and live sound experience. He's led sound sessions for organizations including Christie's, Vassar College, Columbia University, and Lululemon.

Innisfree Garden, 362 Tyrrel Rd., Millbrook, NY. Tickets available closer to the event date at innisfreegarden.org.