Equinox: Artists as Gardens Fall Commission Concert by Gryphon Rue

Equinox
Artists as Gardens Fall Commission Concert by Gryphon Rue
Tuesday, September 22
6 – 7pm; doors open at 5:30pm
$35; members $25

The Artists as Gardens series invites contemporary artists, working across a wide range of disciplines, to think of their practice as a garden that changes with the seasons and other natural cycles.

This concert marks our second by Gryphon Rue, who helped us launch the Artists as Gardens series in March with a two-part performance aligned with the spring equinox. Taking place September 22, Equinox guides us into the fall season. The concert begins at 6pm and concludes at 6:57pm as the sun sets in Philadelphia, just over an hour before the autumnal equinox arrives at 8:05pm.

Unlike a conventional auditorium experience with a single point of focus, this program invites audiences to expand their attention beyond the performers themselves. With musicians spread out in the space and not visible from every seat, the experience emphasizes deep listening alongside contemplative looking. Audience members are encouraged to engage with Alexander Calder’s artworks and the distinctive architecture that shapes the acoustic and visual environment.

Performed by Gryphon Rue and cellist Alex Waterman, Equinox unfolds through composed cues, feedback cycles, and gestural dialogue, resulting in a fluid, unfixed form. Rue sculpts and layers his materials in real time with a physical vocabulary of subtle movements, shaping a sound collage drawn from a reservoir of natural and archival sources. His mix is diffused through a spatialized sound system, resonating within the architecture of Calder Gardens’ Open Gallery. Waterman’s cello, a sophisticated filter of cultural signifiers and sonic noise, enters as a responsive second stream. His sound world emerges from studies of early music, contemporary classical, avant-garde jazz, and North African music.

Gryphon Rue is a commissioned artist in Calder Gardens’ Artists as Gardens series. His contributions include the Sound Passage installation, currently playing in the Curve Gallery, and the premiere of Cave Rainbow in Negative Color, a two-part concert paired with the Giusto Pio compositions Motore Immobile and Ananta. Rue also co-presented, alongside Michael Mandeville, Calder’s Noise, a Cirque Calder Listening Session, further expanding the program’s exploration of sound, movement, and Calder’s artistic legacy.

Alex Waterman is a cellist, sound artist, writer, and archivist who explores how social bodies can live and work together in more musical ways. His diverse body of work includes sound installations, film and radio scores, and solo performances as a cellist and electronic musician. Waterman was an artist in the 2014 Whitney Biennial and has recorded over 30 records as a performer, arranger, and producer. He served as archivist at The Kitchen in New York from 2021 to 2025 and is now world music archivist at Wesleyan University.

Programming at Calder Gardens is generously supported by Jill and Sheldon Bonovitz; The Brown Foundation, Inc. of Houston; Donna Green; Michael Sternberg; and the Friends of Calder Gardens.