Sound in the Garden 2026, Day 3 (Guðnadóttir & Slater // Slauson Malone 1)

From August 12–16, 2026, Berlin’s Neue Nationalgalerie will once again present the open-air concert series “Sound in the Garden,” featuring ambitious live concerts specially tailored to the venue and a multi-generational lineup that transcends genre boundaries. 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.

Oscar- and Grammy-winning cellist and composer Hildur Guðnadóttir is known for her powerful television and film scores—such as those for *Chernobyl* and *Joker*—which employ extreme minimalism and tectonic design to evoke an overwhelming sense of cosmic terror. British sound designer and music producer Sam Slater won that Chernobyl Grammy alongside Guðnadóttir. For their appearance at Sound in the Garden, they are developing a new live set based on instruments they built themselves.

Slauson Malone 1 is the musical alias of multidisciplinary visual artist Jasper Marsalis. In an intense dialogue with collaborators, he inhales the anxieties of modern life and spits them out as sonic collages. Shifting abruptly between fractured jazz loops and lo-fi punk, flashes of soulful vocals and melody are violently cut off by roaring guitar. Existing within the same logic as a fast-paced, unpredictable variety show, his cut-and-paste performances drip with syrupy existential dread and political frustration—an insidiously delectable, genre-fluid counterweight to the harrowing experience that precedes it.