An occasional pause for live ambient music and the people who need it. UCC Keene, opening summer solstice 2026.
What it is
The Clearing is an occasional non-denominational sound environment held in the chapel of the United Church of Christ in Keene, New Hampshire. 90 minutes of live, slow-moving music — composed and improvised in the room, in real time — meant for deep listening, rest, and one another’s company.
Nothing is asked of you. No service, no liturgy, no collection, no expectation about what you do with your time inside.
Practical
- First gathering: Sunday, June 21, 2026 — the summer solstice.
- Cadence: Monthly, schedules permitting, through summer and fall 2026. Dates announced as they’re set.
- Location: UCC Keene, Central Square, Keene, NH.
- Duration: 90 minutes.
- Cost: Free. No registration. No collection.
- Denomination: None required, none implied.
The people
You are why this works. Bring yourself in whatever state you are in. Sit, lie on the floor, close your eyes, stretch, hold a hand, cry, fall asleep. There is tea available in the parlor and quiet conversation for anyone who wants it. Leave the doomscroll at the door. You are here.
The music
Live spatial soundscapes built around the chapel’s acoustics and its small pipe organ (single rank of pipes), a Yamaha studio upright piano, and various electronic instruments from the studios of Greg Wilder and Alison Wilder.
Long forms. Slow harmonic motion. No screens, no quantization, no pre-recorded backing. The music is meant to give your default mode network — the part of the brain that handles worry and rumination when nothing else is asking for it — somewhere quieter to settle.
Sustained, shared listening also drives what researchers call interpersonal neural synchrony: measurable alignment between the brains of co-listeners. You can feel it without knowing the term. It is one reason humans have made music together for as long as we have been human.
A lineage
The Clearing draws from several traditions at once, which is part of why it doesn’t fit cleanly into any of them.
“Authenticity in art is not some verifiable truth embedded in the art object itself. It’s an aesthetic effect — the perception of sincerity that’s cultivated in the listener through skill and intent.”
From Pauline Oliveros and the Deep Listening practice she shaped across the latter half of the twentieth century, it inherits the idea that listening itself is a form of presence — that attention to sound can be trained the way attention to breath is trained, and that a room full of people listening together is doing real work.
From the drone and sustained-tone composers — Éliane Radigue, La Monte Young, Phill Niblock, Catherine Christer Hennix — it inherits the slow harmonic motion and the trust that listeners will follow stillness if you make the stillness generously enough.
From the sacred sound traditions — Hildegard von Bingen, Gregorian and Anglican chant, the New England hymn, the resonance of stone and wood and held breath — it inherits the understanding that a sanctuary is a real acoustic and social technology, and that the architecture of the room is itself part of the music.
From modern contemplative practice — sound baths, meditation centers, secular church, the rise of attention as a public-health concern — it inherits the permission to come in tired and leave a little less so.
Why now
It has been a long few years. Climate grief, political noise, the always-on attention economy, the slow disappearance of places where strangers gather without selling each other anything. The Clearing is built against that condition. Two hours of music, gathered as schedules and seasons allow, designed to draw your attention back to itself, in a room with other people doing the same thing. It is the simplest and oldest kind of medicine, and it has gotten harder to find.
Who We Are
The Clearing is an offshoot of Doctor Body, the electronic duo Greg and Alison have performed as since 2022 — “part shimmering sonic collage, part experimental dream-pop fantasy” in the older shorthand Doctor Body continues. The Clearing is what happens when the same two musicians turn the same instincts toward a sanctuary, a long form, and a room full of people who came to listen rather than to watch.
Greg brings to this decades of work in spatial audio, machine listening, and live-spatial performance inside the long composition lineage of his composition mentors including Alan Schindler, Robert Morris, Sydney Hodkinson, and Burton Beerman and others. His broad experience and pianistic technical facility exists in service of one thing here: to make the room sound like a place worth sitting in for long periods.
Alison brings a parallel practice rooted in guitar, voice, and electronics. Her musical sensibility — patient, song-shaped, attentive to texture and to the human-scale — is a major part of why The Clearing is the shape it is. Her recent orbit through the Spirit of Gravity collective in Brighton, UK keeps the practice connected to a wider international community of experimental listeners.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is The Clearing? The Clearing is a free, non-denominational live ambient sound environment held monthly at the United Church of Christ in Keene, NH. 90 minutes of live spatial music by Doctor Body (Greg and Alison Wilder). No registration, no collection, no denomination required. First gathering: Sunday, June 21, 2026.
Is The Clearing free? Yes. The Clearing is completely free. There is no registration, no collection, and no denominational requirement.
Where is The Clearing held? The Clearing is held at the United Church of Christ in Keene, NH, Central Square, Keene, New Hampshire.
How long is The Clearing? Each gathering lasts approximately 90 minutes.