★★★☆☆ Interactive installation blossomed with new music.

Right next door to the Garden of Light, the Sydney Conservatorium of Music’s own contribution to Vivid Sydney lit up the building with Sound Gardens, a miniature festival of light and new music under the auspices of its larger commercial cousin. Pitched as a “roving feast of new music and installations” the event spread from the Con’s Music Café and down the stairs to the Music Workshop that served as the festival’s Main Stage and featured two main sets, some more casual performances in the Music Café and a series of installations, curated by Damien Ricketson, Craig Scott and Clint Bracknell.

Sound Gardens presented work by the Con’s Composition, Contemporary Music, Music Technology and Jazz programmes and the first installation, Harry Burgess’s Luminous Impulse followed audience members down the staircase as they made their way to the Music Workshop, twists of electronic sounds warping and dipping – an exploration of how light could be imagined sonically.

^{Damien Ricketson and Mimi Kind operating The Rhythm Machine at Sound Gardens}

The event officially began in the Music Workshop with the husky tones of jazz trumpeter Thomas...