Brooklyn Botanic Garden · July 20, 2026
Three thousand people.Lying down.In the middle of Brooklyn.
On a Monday night in July, the Attacca Quartet presented a sold-out sound bath on the Cherry Esplanade at Brooklyn Botanic Garden. For seventy-five minutes, three thousand people lay in silence, immersed in sound.
I. The night
Doors opened at 7:30. Audience members were asked to bring a mat or towel and plan on spending the evening lying down.
3,000
people attended a single performance.
The evening sold out.
Speakers were distributed throughout the garden, allowing the music to arrive from every direction rather than from a single stage.
There was no fixed program. The Quartet allowed the music to unfold in response to the moment.
II. The music is the practice
No guide. No singing bowls. No one at a microphone telling three thousand people how to feel.
The quartet is our meditation practice.
“To borrow what Tenzin Choegyal once said: someone asked him what his meditation practice was, and he replied, ‘I’m doing it right now.’ That’s how we think about playing together. It isn’t about borrowing another practice or bringing wellness into the music. The music itself is the practice.”
The experience begins with listening. There is no prescribed meditation and no wellness script. The invitation is simply to lie down, listen deeply, and allow the music to create a shared experience.
III. What happened in the grass
I didn’t expect that kind of commitment from three thousand people. Nobody was on their phones. Everybody was lying down. It was executed exactly as advertised.
Trucks passed. Cumbia and reggaeton drifted in from Flatbush. Rather than interrupting the experience, the sounds of the city became part of it.
Three thousand mostly young New Yorkers spent a summer evening lying still, listening to a string quartet. The audience looked very different from a traditional chamber music crowd, demonstrating an appetite for immersive musical experiences that extend well beyond the concert hall.
IV. Where this goes
The Attacca Quartet wants to share this program with audiences around the world.
It can happen almost anywhere: a garden, museum, campus, concert hall, or open field. What matters is a space where audiences can settle into deep listening.
The Brooklyn Botanic Garden presentation
Every figure below is a record of what happened on July 20, 2026, not a requirement. It is offered as a working example of how the evening was built and priced.
- Tickets sold
- 3,000
- Ticket price
- $35
- Running time
- 75 min
- Age minimum
- 14+
One performance, sold out
Paid general admission
No intermission
As the Garden advertised it
Where it fits
- Gardens, arboretums, and outdoor summer series
- Campus presenters seeking innovative wellness, student life, and interdisciplinary programming
- Resonant spaces where sustained sound becomes an artistic advantage
- Museums, after-hours series, and late-night festivals
- Programs of every scale. Two hundred people in an auditorium follows the same artistic principle as three thousand in a field.
What it needs
- Immersive distributed sound rather than conventional front of house reinforcement
- An audience instructed in advance to bring a mat and expect to lie down
- A rain date for outdoor presentations
What Attacca would change
For the next iteration, the Quartet hopes to perform from the center of the audience, allowing the sound to radiate outward in every direction.
Where could this happen in your community?
We are currently booking the Attacca Quartet’s Sound Bath for the 2026-27 and 2027-28 seasons and would welcome a conversation about how it could be realized in your venue or community.
Start a conversation More on the Attacca Quartet →
Photographs by Jeremy Weine. All images © Brooklyn Botanic Garden. Forever Green Sound Bath, Cherry Esplanade, July 20, 2026.