Soaring Echoes Returns To Millennium Park

This fall, a walk in Chicago’s Millennium Park will provide more than what meets the eye as the public art installation Soaring Echoes makes its return, beginning Wednesday, October 3.

The aural sculpture made its debut in June during summer music Downtown Sound and continued to play prior to many musical events all summer long.

“We are thrilled to welcome Soaring Echoes back to Chicago’s Millennium Park, said Department of Cultural Affairs Commissioner Michelle Boone.” Chicagoans and visitors will again have the opportunity to experience an internationally renowned art installation.

Now with longer hours, Soaring Echoes will play all of its seven distinct movements created by internationally renowned artist and Professor with the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) Bill Fontana.  The site specific sound “sculpture” was designed precisely for the state-of-the-art sound system of the Jay Pritzker Pavilion.

Fontana’s work has been on display in such renowned locations as the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, Trafalgar Square in London and New York’s Madison Square Garden.  The pioneer of sound art, Fontana’s works engage the human and natural environment as a source of musical information that interacts and transforms an architectural environment.   

“Millennium Park’s trellis over the Pritzker Pavilion comes to life like never before” said Donna La Pietra, Co-Chair of Millennium Park Inc.  “An experience such as this created especially for Chicago and the Park, gives your sense of sound a gymnastic workout as the artist’s audio images race from speaker to speaker all around you.”

The sound movements include birds recorded in Lincoln Park, the Indiana Dunes and wetland habitats in the northeast; and two water sculptures: rhythmic textures of moving water and the flow of Lake Michigan and the Chicago River.

Harkening to Chicago’s history as a transportation hub is another of the movements which highlights train bells and whistles, boat and ships sounds and other transportation machines.  In a similar element is yet another sound sculpture of an abstract mix of wind turbines combined with the sounds of cars moving over the steel grid surface of the Columbus Avenue Bridge.

Finding the beauty in spoken word and conversation are the final two movements which include master storyteller, North Carolina’s Louise Anderson, recorded back in 1991 and one that mixes sports with commerce as recordings from the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and a major league baseball game interplay.

The complete schedule of performances follows:

DAY                            DATE             TIME

Wednesday               10/3                1 p m – 8 pm

Thursday                    10/4                5 pm – 8 pm

Friday                         10/5                9 am – 1 pm

Saturday                     10/6                3 pm – 6 pm

Sunday                       10/7                11 am – 2 pm

Wednesday               10/10              11 am – 2 pm

Saturday                     10/13              5 pm – 8 pm

Sunday                       10/14              11 am – 2 pm

Wednesday               10/17              11 am – 2 pm

Saturday                     10/20              5 pm – 8 pm

Sunday                       10/21              11 am – 2 pm

Wednesday               10/24              11 am – 2 pm

Saturday                     10/27              5 pm – 8 pm

Sunday                       10/28              11 am – 2 pm

Wednesday              10/31              11 am – 2 pm

Soaring Echoes was developed in partnership between Millennium Park, Inc. and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC), led by Cary McMillan, Chairman of the SAIC Board of Governors. Audio control hardware is generously provided by Meyer Sound Labs.

Millennium Park

Millennium Park is located in the heart of downtown Chicago. It is bordered by Michigan Ave. to the west, Columbus Dr. to the east, Randolph St. to the north and Monroe St. to the south. Convenient parking is located in the Millennium Park Garage (entrance on Columbus at Monroe or Randolph) and at the Grant Park North and East Monroe Garages, all located within a short walking distance of Millennium Park. 

Millennium Park, managed and programmed by the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events, is an award-winning center for art, music, architecture and landscape design. The result of a unique partnership between the City of Chicago and the philanthropic community, the 24.5-acre park features the work of world-renowned architects, planners, artists and designers. Among Millennium Park’s prominent features are the Frank Gehry-designed Jay Pritzker Pavilion, the most sophisticated outdoor concert venue of its kind in the United States; the interactive Crown Fountain by Jaume Plensa; the contemporary Lurie Garden designed by the team of Gustafson Guthrie Nichol, Piet Oudolf and Robert Israel; and Anish Kapoor’s hugely popular Cloud Gate sculpture.