Sound In The Garden: In Dialogue with Fujiko Nakaya: Alva Noto, Kali Malone, Ryuichi Sakamoto and others
In dialogue with Fujiko Nakaya: Alva Noto, Stephen O’Malley, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Kali Malone, David Tudor
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Neue NationalgalerieMuseum ticket (10–18:00), Free admission (18–23:59)
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From 12 – 16 August 2026, Berlin's Neue Nationalgalerie once again teams up with CTM Festival to present the open-air concert series Sound In The Garden. After four nights of live concerts, Sunday will be dedicated to special sound installations created in honor of Japanese artist Fujiko Nakaya, who is presenting a site-specific fog sculpture in the sculpture garden of the Neue Nationalgalerie.
Sound in the Garden follows in the tradition of innovative concert formats that have repeatedly taken place in the museum's sculpture garden since the Neue Nationalgalerie opened—from the Jazz in the Garden events of the 1970s and 1980s, where artists such as Alice Coltrane and Keith Jarrett performed, to the Sound in the Garden series, which has been established since the building reopened in 2022. The clarity and precision of Mies van der Rohe’s architecture, together with the ephemeral poetry of Fujiko Nakaya’s fog sculpture, serve as parallel inspirations for understanding to conceive of music as a spatial art form. This is enabled by an immersive d&b Soundscape audio system that allows participants to experience the music intensively as they wander wandering among the garden’s plants and sculptures. This year, the spatial experience of the garden will be further enhanced through a subtle intervention by the Berlin-based architectural practice of Daryan Knoblauch, which will serve to provide some indispensable weather protection without having to directly intervene in Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s iconic architectural ensemble.
This day-long program presents an expansive dialogue dedicated to the ethereal fog sculptures of Fujiko Nakaya. The lineup includes doom-drone merchant and composer Stephen O'Malley, whose physical walls of sound are monolithic; Kali Malone, celebrated for her microtonal organ compositions and slow-evolving minimalist movements; electronic pioneer Alva Noto’s precise and glitchy digitalis sliding into starkly beautiful aural architectures; David Tudor, whose historic experiments with feedback and live electronic routing spawn sounds which feel organic; and late celebrated composer Ryuichi Sakamoto, whose mastery of delicate piano minimalism and elegant electronic arrangements exist in perfect harmony with the environment of Nakaya's shifting mist.
Sound in the Garden is curated by Gregor Quack, Volkswagen Group curator, in collaboration with Tessa Nijdam and CTM – Festival for Adventurous Music & Art, Berlin. The project is made possible by FREUNDE der Nationalgalerie and has received crucial support by audibene GmbH and d&b audiotechnik.
Neue Nationalgalerie
Potsdamer Str. 50
10785 Berlin
The Neue Nationalgalerie is fully wheelchair accessible.
Persons taking public transit may check the current status of elevators at the subway stops nearest each venue, via the BVG (both in German and English).
If you have further questions about event and venue accessibility, or to help plan your visit, please write to us at accessibility(at)ctm-festival.de.