The premiere of the Spring Sound Garden event in 2018, with Neil Sherman painting at his easel, and James Everest playing guitar in the harbor. Photo provided

By Laura Durenberger-Grunow - Boreal Community Media - June 23, 2026

2026 marks 20 years since construction began to transform the site of the former downtown Grand Marais Standard Oil Station into Harbor Park. In commemoration of the anniversary, Minnesota artist James Everest is releasing an app-accessible, digital version of his previous 2018 and 2021 Sound Garden performances. Community members and visitors will soon be able to access this locally created art piece, which features a mix of music and spoken word, virtually on demand through signage in Harbor Park, featuring a QR code that links to a free, geo-spatial app called ECHOES.

Everest defines a Sound Garden as "a site-specific spatial 'symphony,' composed in '3-D.'" The production process involved mapping the specific geographic contours of a location over several weeks. "I spent several weeks in the winter and spring of 2018 in Grand Marais, with my portable recording studio, composing, recording, and mixing the music while spending hours each day listening and carefully mapping all the contours of the park," he said.

He began exploring this concept for Harbor Park during previous work with collaborative dance companies, including a 2014 site-specific performance with the group Catalyst.

Water Suite: Four Seasonal Sound Gardens

The initial Harbor Park sound garden was created in 2018 as the second installment of Everest’s "Water Suite: Four Seasonal Sound Gardens," a series he designed featuring four different bodies of water across Minnesota. Grand Marais Harbor Park was the site for spring, and the performance first debuted over Memorial Day weekend that year as part of the Art Along the Lake festival. Everest returned to Harbor Park in 2021 to expand on the 2018 piece.

Both versions of the Spring Sound Garden were temporary, live events. Everest told Boreal Community Media that for those performances, he installed 40 speakers throughout the park in 2018, and 56 in 2021. Each speaker played a separate component of his musical score at a soft level to accompany the sounds nature is already providing for a completely immersive experience. "I love collaborating with nature - with the sounds and 'dances' that occur in the natural world - and I love creating experiences that combine local history and ecology and local artists into a larger collaboration that connects audiences to the places in our communities in a lasting and meaningful way," he said.

2018 Spring Sound Garden

The 2018 event combined a variety of local historical and artistic collaborations. As part of a literary component, Staci Lola Drouillard, Jeffrey Skemp, and Tim Blighton performed commissioned stories and poems during live storytelling and poetry tours. Musical performances were provided by the Free Range Orchestra and Choir, which featured local performers Will Moore, Erika Ternes, and Rose Arrowsmith.

Additionally, plein air painter Neil Sherman created two new oil paintings on-site during the event. Sherman also had several paintings on display at the specific location where each piece was originally painted. Cook County Schools art teacher Mila Horak and her then-seventh-grade class created custom ceramic urns and pots, which housed the speakers.

The project also featured a historical component. Everest partnered with then-Cook County History Museum Executive Director Carrie Johnson to organize guided harbor history tours and install an archival photo display throughout the harbor, matching each historical photograph to the exact location where it was originally taken. Finally, Everest, Johnson, and Horak collaborated with Juno Cefalo to present an illustrated children’s book on outdoor panels. The display recounted Cefalo's discovery of a 3,000-year-old spear point on the East Bay at age three, and the actual artifact was placed on display during the event.

Spring Sound Garden Returns in 2021

In 2021, the performance was brought back to Harbor Park, and Everest expanded the Sound Garden by increasing the number of speakers from 40 to 56. He also integrated more of the park's history into the experience by collaborating with Katie Clark at the Cook County History Museum to record oral histories from individuals who helped establish the park, including Gene Erickson and Frankie Jarchow.

 Album cover for the Spring Sound Garden, image provided

Following the 2021 event, public interest grew regarding how to listen to the Sound Garden music outside of live events. To accommodate this, Everest recorded a CD, but he knew he wanted to take the idea a step further.

"I released a CD of the music, but the music was always intimately tied to the place, the site, at Harbor Park. That’s where I composed it, where I recorded it, mixed it, in Grand Marais, on the lake, on the harbor. It was always meant to be heard there, onsite."

Virtual 2026 Spring Sound Garden 

The 2026 iteration will be accessible through QR codes printed on park signs placed throughout the Harbor, which direct users to download ECHOES, a free geo-locative audio app. The platform uses GPS data to trigger specific audio tracks depending on the listener's physical location within the park boundaries. The new signage and app infrastructure were developed in coordination with Grand Marais Parks and Rec Manager Dave Tersteeg and the Grand Marais Park Board.

Listeners will be able to hear the previously recorded oral histories alongside voice and stories from Drouillard, photos from the Historical Society archives, and music from Moore, Ternes, and Arrowsmith.

The signs will be installed around Grand Marais Harbor later this summer. 

Learn more about James Everest here: https://jgeverest.com/