Name: Sanctuary for Environmental Listening / Various Artists
Start: 2026-04-25T14:00:00-04:00
End: 2026-04-25T18:00:00-04:00
Location: Holden Chapel

$Sanctuary for Environmental Listening \/ Various Artists$

For several hours on the Saturday afternoon of April 25, Holden Chapel will turn into a sanctuary for environmental listening.
About this Event

Sanctuary for Environmental Listening

For several hours on the Saturday afternoon of April 25, Holden Chapel will turn into a sanctuary for environmental listening. Being one of the oldest buildings in Harvard Yard, since 1744 this space has served many disparate functions, hosting morning and evening prayers and lectures, and later housing a medical laboratory. Its walls, which have witnessed both contemplation and scientific inquiry, today provide a unique environment for sonic experiences. On this occasion, the chapel will be filled with compositions by Music Department students and guest composers who, in their work, draw on environmental recordings. This experiece will serve as a reminder that science, spirituality, nature and human cultures are not seperate realms, but deeply entangled aspects of life at large.
Artists and composers include:
Marisse Cato, Victor Arul, John Pax, Seth Torres, Michelle Cheng, Maximiliano Soto Mayorga and others
Shelemay Sound Lab The Shelemay Sound Lab offers resources for editing, reviewing, and creating multimedia projects in stereo and multi-channel formats. Equipped with modern and legacy audio technology, we support interdisciplinary creativity and diverse engagement with sound. Through workshops, listening events, an artist-in-residence program, and personalized guidance, the lab hopes to enrich Harvard’s exploration of music, sound, production, and scholarship.

Walking Festival of Sound

Walking Festival of Sound is a transdisciplinary event exploring the role of walking through and listening to our everyday surroundings. It combines a number of free and public events including walking performances, walking seminars and listening sessions, all taking place in diverse public spaces and online. Walking Festival of Sound facilitates a meeting point for the international network of practitioners and researchers interested in sound and walking. Through diverse events we explore how walking and listening practices can augment and challenge the way we perceive, navigate through, and care for our shared environments. In 2019 the festival took place in two cities, Stockholm, Sweden and Newcastle upon Tyne, UK. In April 2021, the festival moved to Krakow, Poland and Edinburgh, Scotland. In 2022, the festival visited Seoul, Korea and Vancouver, Canada. Zurich, Switzerland, was the festival's site in 2024. In 2026 the festival visits Cambridge and Boston in the USA.