Botanical Resonance Concerts

March 25, 2023
11:30 am - 12:15 pm
March 25, 2023
12:45 pm - 1:30 pm
Missouri Botanical Garden > Stephen and Peter Sachs Museum
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Experience Botanical Resonance: Plants and Sounds in the Garden before it closes at the Stephen and Peter Sachs Museum and enjoy performances featuring plant-based instruments. 


Botanical Resonance is on view in the Sachs Museum through March 31, 11:30 a.m.–4:30 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday. 

Performances take place March 25 at 11:30 a.m. and 12:45 p.m. 

Sachs Museum admission and the musical performances are included in Garden admission. 

Botanical Resonance explores how plants create and cause sounds in our natural environment and cultural arenas. The exhibition showcases different plants used to create musical instruments in cultures around the world, as well as some plants make unique sounds throughout their lifecycles in nature and in the Garden. For the species used to make instruments, many are threatened in their native environments due to the increasing production and demand for the desirable plant material.

Musicians Kunama Mtendaji, Donald Williams, Jarrod Gillispie, Marshanette Densmore, Kelly Wimbly, Rahtu Johnson, David A.N. Jackson, and others will perform. Some of the plant-based instruments that will be featured in these performances include: the shekere and balafon, lent to the Museum by Michael “Baba Mike” Nelson, which are on display in Botanical Resonance, as well as clave (clapsticks), reed flute and berimbau, krin (log drum), fe (gourd), didgeridoo (healing horn), cajon and bata (both wooden box drums.)

The musicians will dedicate the performance to Michael “Baba Mike” Nelson, a St. Louis musician, performer, and educator who died suddenly last year. Several of Nelson’s plant-based west African instruments are on display in Botanical Resonance.