Music for the Garden by JJJJJerome Ellis

As part of the Resonant: Bodies, Songs, and Strings exhibition, JJJJJerome Ellis presents Music for the Garden, a performance conceived for the museum. Known for their sonic work blending music, poetry, and improvisation, Ellis is an Afro-Caribbean composer, poet, performer, and proud stutterer.

In harmony with the clouds, the sun, and the stars, Music for the Garden combines live saxophone, electronic sound, and spoken word into a resonant composition. Set in the Persian Garden at Chatou, where nature and ceremonial space meet, the work is what JJJJJerome Ellis calls a musical offering for all species. The performance engages with the garden’s medicinal and aromatic flora, especially its roses, which symbolize the soul’s journey and pursuit of wholeness. The central fountain, embodying infinite music and flowing water memory, connects with the surrounding nature, creating a seamless experience where every element contributes to the composition. Ellis refers to the experience as a “sound bath,” an offering of resonance, designed to soothe the bodymind and honor the memory of water, which carries vibration and emotion. Sound here becomes a vessel for love, joy, and healing, transforming listening into an act of attunement and communion—of sensing the invisible currents beneath the surface and opening a new way of knowing. In this way, Ellis invites us to celebrate the profound kinship between human and the more-than-human world.

On Level II of the exhibition, Jaryaņ wîî ii gêkawaņ mbeŋaye (These Instruments Are My Friends), a collaboration with Masalit poet and activist Magdi Masaraa, explores how sound can carry memory and serve as a living archive. Composed of a new improvised piece in dialogue with rare instruments from the endangered Masalit musical tradition, this work emphasizes the urgency of preserving cultures in the face of displacement and loss. It reflects on how music can safeguard and transmit endangered ancestral knowledge.

On Level III, Ellis’s visual scores in A Bouquet of Scores transform the stutter into a space of possibility, turning disfluency into “clearings”—disruptions that open new ways to experience time. Through sound, silence, and visual form, the work challenges social norms and explores themes of liberation and healing, particularly in relation to Black and disabled communities.

JJJJJerome Ellis, Photo : Liz Ligon