Plantasia/Photo: James Richards IV
Leaves dance under the soft breaths of wind, whipped into a rustling ballet, and verdant pads soak up synthesizers. Plantasia, held across two days (September 14-15) at the Garfield Park Conservatory, is Chicago’s largest celebration of ambient music yet. The festival is named after Mort Garson’s “Mother Earth’s Plantasia,” reissued in 2019 by Sacred Bones Records, a co-producer of this gathering, where audiophiles and phytophiles unite under the glass dome of the greenhouse for trailblazers in electronic synthesis.
Originally released in 1976, “Plantasia” was inspired by the fruitful musings that maybe fauna could appreciate sound just as much as people under the influence of Mother Nature’s green thumb. The album, composed on a Moog synthesizer, is an early foray into music as sound design: Synthesizers opened up immense possibilities for timbre, the quality of sound that makes instruments playing the same note sound different, allowing for the reproduction and generation of new instruments. Garson’s second track on the album, “Symphony for a Spider Plant,” includes wobbly basses and bubbly shimmers, while melodies in side two’s “Swingin’ Spathiphyllums” sound closer to suction-cup steps with an almost slapping grass high-hat. Close your eyes and the album grows a moving landscape of swaying plants, whether or not the plants in range of the speakers appreciate the beauty of pressurized air, it reconnects listeners to their ecological neighbors.
Back to the festival: The lineup includes Suzanne Ciani, a pioneer in electronic synthesis and composition. Similar to Garson, who passed away in 2008, Ciani, who lived by the beach throughout her life, draws on the natural as she recreates sounds, including famously the Coca-Cola bubbles. Her live sets, inspired by waves that grow and recede, are transportive meditations that turn from soundbath to violent narrative storms. Expect a long-form masterclass on the intricacies of sonic feminism and sound design.
Plantasia/Photo: Joel Meinholz
Also on the bill is Grammy-winning Arooj Aftab, who sings haunting lyrics with stripped-back minimal productions that still sound texturally rich. A pioneer in her own right, she champions Pakistani indie music while working in New York’s jazz scene. The rest of the festival’s acts read like a crash course into heartfelt immersive music that spans ambient, electronic and indie, including: Tim Hecker, Windy & Carl, John Carroll Kirby, Kara-Lis Coverdale, Voice Actor, Don Slepian, African American Sound Recordings, Jill Fraser, Nosedrip, Roméo Poirier, Jeff Kolar and Zander Raymond.
Through open exhibitions, Garfield Park Conservatory welcomes guests to engage with microcosms of multispecies networks that grow together in their shared climatic niche. In the final days of the warm season, the festival landscape includes a new outdoor stage that invites a larger exploration of the conservatory’s grounds with bigger artists.
This annual event between Sacred Bones and the Empty Bottle has finally grown deep roots, promising to deliver a reorientation toward sound amid the immense beauty of Garfield Park Conservatory, wonderfully cared for and curated by a large team with the Garfield Park Conservatory Alliance and Chicago Park District.
Plantasia runs September 14-15 at the Garfield Park Conservatory, 300 North Central Park. Tickets and more information are available at emptybottle.com. Day passes are $55 in advance and $65 at the doors; two-day passes are $85. All web purchases involve fees.
