Sound Garden
Every Wednesday until August 31, 2022
This summer, the pavilion of the Fondation Beyeler park will once again resonate to the pulsating beats and melodies of our “Sound Garden.” Every Wednesday, visitors savoring the balmy evening air over a cool drink will get to enjoy the music of a line-up both regional and national, ranging from jazz and canzoni to disco and Hawaiian melodies. What better way could there be to while away those precious mid-week hours than with the varied program of this year’s “Sound Garden” in the relaxed atmosphere of the museum’s own park?
“Sound Garden” will take place every Wednesday between 6 and 8 p.m. from 29 June until 31 August 2022.
Venue: the pavilion in the park
Admission: free, no advanced booking required
Upcoming events
June 29 – Chad Lawson
World-renowned pianist and composer Chad Lawson is modernising classical piano music for the streaming age with his breath-taking melodies and rich string arrangements. Chad Lawson creates music for mind, body, and soul. He is the creator and host of the iHeart-nominated mental-health podcast, “Calm It Down,” and composes meditative music as an invitation to escape a world full of noise and to enjoy a moment of inner peace.
July 6 – Arvild J. Baud
The works of Arvild J. Baud are not just tracks, but rather multimedia experiences combining performance, film, and visual sound art. The ambient resonances of the soothing soundscape that he has created for our Sound Garden will have the effect of acoustically modeling the museum garden, enabling listeners to immerse themselves as much in the warm summer evening as in his many-layered sound worlds. Arvild J. Baud defines himself as a cross-disciplinary artist who is active in sound, composition, performance, theater, video art, and singing. He first came to the public’s attention with his Zurich-based disco-punk band Waldorf, which performed at clubs and festivals in Europe and the USA, including at “Sónar” in Barcelona and the “Electroclash Festival” in New York. Arvild J. Baud has been creating interdisciplinary performance projects under the JAJAJA label since 2004.
July 13 – Malummí
The warm sound of the electric guitar, synthesizer, and percussion that together make up the Malummí trio from Basel transports audiences into boundless, ethereal realms—to the ends of the earth, where the infinite and the finite are no longer opposites. The cosmopolitan character of the trio, which has roots in Italy, Croatia, and Brazil, is reflected in their tracks, for as different as the songs are, they invariably tell of the longing for faraway places and for the ties that grow stronger with distance. Larissa Rapold, Giovanni Vicari, and Alon Ben like to experiment with electro, indie, folk, and pop, and quite often with non-musical acoustic material such as birdsong, spaceship sounds, or the roar of the sea. Add in Rapold’s voice and it is easy to drift off and imagine oneself in some remote world.
July 20 – Hawaiian Memories
While the line-up and band name have changed over the years, the unmistakable twang of the Hawaiian guitar has remained the Hulas’ signature sound. These days Basel’s Hula Club band goes by the name Hawaiian Memories, and its spectrum ranges from Hawaiian hits to pop songs and pieces influenced by the then relatively new genre of rock ‘n’ roll. Even after several decades on the Swiss music scene, the “Hawaiians with Basel roots” still have it in them to thrill people of all generations as much with their music as with their positive vibes. Basel guitarist Walter Roost caught his first whiff of Hawaii when he heard the Dutch Kiliman Hawaiians on the radio in 1945. Fascinated by their Hawaiian pop, he and three friends spontaneously founded a group of their own, the Hula Hawaiians. With their dynamic arrangements of South Seas sounds, the Hulas even made it into the German hit parade in the early 1960s. What made the band popular, however, was not just its catchy tunes, but above all its memorable live concerts both at home and abroad—to say nothing of its radio and TV appearances.
July 27 – The Rosebud’s House Band
The Rosebud’s House Band presents a repertoire that covers the entire spectrum of all that Ragtime has to offer. With its virtuoso fusion of different genres, the trio made up of Lennard Fiehn (clarinet), Martin Theurillat (guitar), and Thomas Fuller (bass) conjures up the unique energy and atmosphere of the American Midwest at every concert. Ragtime was the leading style of entertainment in the pre-jazz days of Gilded Age America. And it was then, in 1889, that the Rosebud Café first opened in St. Louis (MO). Hitting the keys was either proprietor and pianist Tom Turpin himself or one of his buddies, like Scott Joplin and Joe Jordan. At their side was always the house band consisting of clarinet, guitar, and doublebass. Over 100 years later, The Rosebud’s House Band brings that legendary St. Louis spirit back to life, at the same time returning Ragtime to its roots.
August 3 – Anouchka Gwen Solo
Anouchka Gwen herself describes her own personal blend of R 'n' B, pop, and neo-soul as melancholy, romantic, and mildly critical. The imaginary worlds that she creates in her intimate performances are as much a place to dream, to live, and to breathe freely as they are safe havens from the daily grind. Her latest album, “Utopia” , grapples with acceptance, representation, awareness, and feelings of vulnerability—all of them themes that for her as a young BIPOC artist are very much a part of everyday life. But music is more than just a way of processing reality for this young Basel artist. It is also about self-expression and self-discovery.
August 10 – Morphing Territories
Philipp Weibel (Morphing Territories) animates his audiences with psychedelic-dubby studio sounds that oscillate between ambient textures and technoid structures. Finely elaborated through unflagging improvisation and introverted self-discovery, his sound constructs push the boundaries of complexity and simplicity. This explains the Morphing Territories sound world, in which traces of pulsating rhythms conspire with the emphatic beat of the drums and the warmth of the tracks to produce a highly potent mix.
August 17 – Kneubühler / Ethimm
The singer and producer Lukas Amacher, aka “Ethimm” , has created his own refreshing brand of electro-pop by skillfully fusing modern production methods with the club sounds and styles of past decades. The result is an eccentric “pop-pourri” of New Wave, dub, disco and Balearic. Inspired by bands like Talking Heads and David Bowie, Ethimm takes his cues from the best that the late seventies and eighties had to offer and with pulsating bass lines and groovy percussion delivers a danceable sound that is ideal for long summer nights. David Moore, who as Kneubühler has been active on the Zurich music scene for many years, shares Ethimm’s humor, which is an important ingredient of both artists’ music. As the supporting act for Ethimm, Kneubühler will provide the acoustic prelude to the evening by filling our Sound Garden with his funny and poetic dialect tracks.
August 24 – Baye Magatte Band
The musician Magatte Ndiaye founded his Baye Magatte Band specially to play Mbalax, the most popular genre of Senegalese pop music. His texts turn on such core values as tolerance and solidarity and he sings them in French and Wolof. Born into a musical family in northern Senegal in 1974, Magatte Ndiaye was introduced to singing, dance, and percussion as a young child. His latest album “Kaye Kaye” weaves together traditional percussion instruments from all over Senegal with very different influences from West and Central African pop and the Caribbean, as well as funk, jazz, and rock to produce a truly unique sound. It is this potent mixture that the Baye Magatte Band intends to bring along to the Fondation Beyeler’s “Sound Garden”.
August 31 – Tonino Castiglione
The Italian singer-songwriter who now lives in Basel sings of courage and happiness, wisdom and trust, empathy and love in songs full of subtle humor, mischief, and wordplay. So passionate is his delivery, so virtuoso his guitar-playing, so original his anecdotes that Tonino Castiglione cannot help but captivate his audiences. His “Coraggio e Fortuna” program pits his own humanity against racism and the social exclusion to which it leads. Tonino Castiglione’s songs are stories taken straight from life that culminate in intensive, urgent soundscapes—which is what makes them so distinctive.
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