Stoneleigh: a natural garden and Bowerbird present a concert featuring composer-clarinetist Stuart Bogie and composer-keyboardist Buck McDaniel, continuing their acclaimed collaboration that began with the 2024 project November Variations.
First conceived in 2024, November Variations began as a series of five improvised concerts at New York’s Church of Our Saviour, recorded live to capture each composition as it unfolded. The resulting five-part album is being released in parts leading up to the 2025 five-concert residency in Manhattan, November 17 – 21.
The duo performs for clarinet and organ, melding contemporary American minimalism, drones, and rapturous melodies. McDaniel’s expansive organ voicings and deft melodic interplay provide a dynamic landscape for Bogie’s clarinet, creating an immersive, horizonless sound.
This November 14th performance at Stoneleigh offers an opportunity to experience the duo’s ethos of stillness, connection, and sonic exploration in two distinct instrumental settings.
About the Artists
Composer and multi-instrumentalist Stuart Bogie was born in Evanston, Illinois. He studied for six Years with Gary Onstad and at the Music Center of the North Shore before attending Interlochen Art Academy and the University of Michigan where he studied with Debra Chodacki. He is the recipient of a Meet the Composer grant, and he composed the score for the Oscar-nominated documentary How To Survive a Plague, featuring performances by the Kronos Quartet. He has written for film, television, commercials, and the stage. He has released nine albums as a leader.
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Buck McDaniel is a composer, conductor, keyboardist, and improviser based in New York City. His music blends the American Minimalist tradition with a personal storytelling practice. McDaniel’s work often explores site, text, and memory, engaging both concert, sacred, and non-traditional spaces with equal depth and curiosity.
His compositions have been performed and broadcast internationally, including on NBC’s Saturday Night Live, BBC Radio 3, WQXR, and NPR’s The Moth Radio Hour. His work appears in Oliver Hermanus’s film The History of Sound, starring Paul Mescal and Josh O’Connor, which premiered at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival. A frequent collaborator, McDaniel has worked with artists including Sam Smith, Nico Muhly, Sam Amidon, and Stuart Bogie.
Stoneleigh is the public garden of nonprofit Natural Lands. The garden provides joy and well-being for thousands of guests every year through inspiring displays of native plants that support local ecology in a magnificent former Main Line estate.
parking
There is a 63-car asphalt parking lot at the main entrance to the garden at 1829 East County Line Road, Villanova, PA 19085.
guest hours
Tuesday – Sunday, 10:00 AM to 5:00 PM. Closed Mondays.
more garden informationRegistration is required to reserve your spot. Your online registration signifies acceptance of our terms and conditions (read in full below). Questions? Please contact us.
Thanks to our sponsors:
Shreiner Tree Care
REI Cooperative Action Fund
Event Terms and Conditions
Cancellation
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Are you up to the challenge? Explore all 20 of our featured preserves and Stoneleigh: a natural garden, and collect all the code words to receive a Natural Lands “Find Yourself Outside” t-shirt.
get startedRock, roots, and rhythm. No matter what the style, music is better with nature as the backdrop.
So get your groove on this year with Natural Lands at these amazing events!
join usEast Branch Brewing Company will be pouring suds on select Saturdays. Enjoy refreshments with a take-your-breath-away view.
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