Photos taken by Sage Thomas
Sonic Bloom will be held during the Summer Solstice, June 20th-23rd, in celebration of the beginning of summer. The Summer Solstice occurs when the sun reaches its highest and most northern point in the sky.
The Location:
The festival will be held at Hummingbird Ranch in Spanish Peaks Country, Colorado. This scenic venue is filled with beautiful greenery, creeks, and wildlife, making it the perfect place to camp and hold a transformative festival. Walsenburg, Colorado is the closest large town to the venue, and it is a two and a half hour drive south of Denver.
The Lineup:
Sonic Bloom’s lineup consists of a multitude of unique artists across the electronic, funk, and jam genres. Gramatik, OPIUO, Emancipator Ensemble, The New Observatory (made up of The New Deal’s Jamie Shields and String Cheese Incident’s Michael Travis and Jason Hann), Kayla Scintilla & Eve Olution, Yheti, Culprate, Spoonbill, Russ Liquid Test, The Widdler, Ayla Nero, Zilla, The Librarian, Of The Trees, and many more will be performing at Sonic Bloom this summer.
The Pre-Party:
The Unified Field Official Sonic Bloom Pre-Party will be on Friday May 10th that features Break Science, Shlump, kLL sMTH, ill-esha, Moontricks, Janover, Melody Lines, and LowPro. It will be at Cervantes’ Masterpiece and The Other Side dual venue in Denver, CO.
The Academy:
Sonic Bloom offers three separate Academy series leading up to the festival. These series will take place from June 16th- 19th, and enrollment is separate from your festival ticket. The campsites for these educational series will be on the same festival grounds, and by attending, you get first choice of premier camping on site.
The Ableton Live Academy with Subaqueous and Cualli
If you are to enroll in this Academy, you will link up and collaborate with other musicians who are dedicated to their craft – just like you. In addition to being immersed in the nature and beauty of Hummingbird Ranch, you will enhance your music production skills through workshops that are focused on helping you find and develop your own unique sound. Topics of these workshops include: learning from your favorite tracks, sampling and resampling, finding and playing off your strengths, workflow, synthesis and sound design, overview of mixing, and the basics of mastering. The series will be taught by Isaac Cotec (Subaqueous) and Aaron Holsapple (Cualli), both accomplished music production professionals looking to inspire others and teach the necessary tools to help every individual’s creative process thrive and flourish.
You will work with Sonic Bloom’s main digital audio workstation, Ableton Live. If you know what a clip is, understand the idea of wrapping, and know how to plug in a keyboard, then you are prepared for the series. If this series interests you, and you do not know how to use Ableton Live, a six-hour informational course can be shared with you before the event.
The Visionary Art Academy with Amanda Sage
If you are to enroll in this Academy, you will be taken on an artistic, paint-filled journey from the ground up with a mindset full of introspection. You will use both ancient and modern materials in efforts to understand the underlying patterns of creativity ranging from primeval chaos to civilized control, you will study both the techniques of old masters as well as new creators in efforts to understand traditional techniques while addressing new ones, and you will learn to balance the components of real observation in comparison to your pure imagination in efforts to sharpen practical skills.
This series will be taught by Amanda Sage, an artist with profound visionary skills who uses her paintings as an instrument for spiritual growth and transformation. She was an apprentice to Michael Fuchs and worked alongside Ernest Fuchs, the founder of Fantastic Realism, and is now the co-founder Vienna Academy of Visionary Art and is on the board of directors of CoSM (Chapel of Sacred Mirrors), Alex & Allyson Grey’s art sanctuary in New York. She has hosted lectures, workshops, and exhibits around the world.
The Permaculture Academy with Permaculture Action Network
If you are to enroll in this Academy, you will learn useful skills for regenerating ecosystems and building the community in a sustainable way. This series will teach you: permaculture design processes and principles, rainwater harvesting and earthwork, permaculture landscape design and food forestry, natural building and appropriate technology, social transformation and community organization methods, and practical tools and techniques for regenerating ecology.
This series will be run by the Permaculture Action Network, an organization that mobilizes thousands of people to take action on regenerative projects by collaborating with musicians and cultural events. They have influenced thousands of concert-goers and festival attendees to build systems and spaces through “Action Days” that put the ethics of earth care, people care, and fair share in the center of our culture. People who have graduated from this series have gone on to: start their own permaculture design and install companies, install edible landscape professionally, design their own permaculture homestead and regenerative farms, organize Permaculture Action Days, teach ecological design science, organize in social movements on issues ranging from immigration to housing.
The Policies:
Once in the festival, no re-entry is allowed. You may, however, go to your car as much as you want because parking is considered a part of the festival grounds.
Alcohol is prohibited for those under 21, however, if you are 21 or older, you may bring two cases of canned beer per person per car, one plastic bottle of liquor (up to 1.75 liter) per person per car, and two boxes of wine per person per car. No glass is allowed!
No pets are allowed at Sonic Bloom. Service animals are allowed with proper paperwork and identification, and the dog must be on a leash at all times.
Sonic Bloom has a zero-tolerance policy for harassment of any kind, including but not limited to: race, color, nationality, gender, gender identity, gender presentation, sexual orientation, age, body size, disability, religion, citizenship, appearance, and pregnancy. If a participant chooses to break this policy, they will be removed from the festival right away.
The Experience:
As you can see, Sonic Bloom is a unique and embracive festival that is one of a kind. The festival itself will be filled with music, art, performances, camping, dance, yoga, installations, nature, science, sustainability, social consciousness, and community all converging to celebrate the power of music, the beauty of the earth, the expression of individuality, the importance of collectivity, and the start to summer. Prior to the festival, there will be three diverse Academy series full of education, music, production, visionary art, painting, science, permaculture, yoga, hiking, and social change. And prior to that, there will be a Unified Field Pre-Party in Denver to mark the beginning of the seasonal endeavors.
Sonic Bloom is considered a music festival, but there is so much more to that than what meets the eye. Make sure to grab your tickets here to see what the weekend of the Summer Solstice at Hummingbird Ranch is truly all about.
If you want to learn more about the Sonic Bloom Academy and further details on their policies, check out all of this information and more on the official Sonic Bloom website.