By Ali Luthmers The 2012 GardenMusic Festival at Fairchild Tropical Botanic Gardens promises to be a spectacular event. As artistic directors of the festival, the Sixth Floor Trio is bringing its visionary concept of performance to life, featuring not only four subscription concerts, but also short outdoor concerts, open rehearsals, masterclasses, a children’s concert and interactive presentations with every child who comes to the gardens during the week. The trio will also be performing Random Acts of Culture (sponsored by The Knight Foundation) during the festival, surprising unknowing visitors with music when they least expect it! The subscription concerts will be far from ordinary. Musicians from all over the world will be converging in Miami to explore well-loved and lesser-known chamber music works. A highlight of the festival will be a collaborative concert in which the musicians work with talented Miami-based artists for an exciting concert that features the Rosie Herrera Dance Theatre, video artists Jillian Mayer and Lucas Leyva, the Miami City Theatre and poet Scott Cunningham. The music itself will be an eclectic mix of jazz, bluegrass, rock, and classical music from the Renaissance to the modern day. GardenMusic will be taking Fairchild’s innovative arts and education programs to the next level. The hugely successful Art at Fairchild showcases prominent artists in an unconventional way, and GardenMusic will bring the same idea of blending art with nature into the realm of music and the performing arts. Fairchild is also passionately committed to education, with programs such as the Fairchild Challenge which fosters educational awareness in youth, as well as a wide variety of continuing education classes for adults. GardenMusic will build on these models by developing a longterm plan for bringing music education into the gardens. The first annual festival will be one week long, from March 25^th until April 1^st, and will demonstrate the scope of possibility for the coming years. For tickets and more information, visit www.fairchildgarden.org/gardenmusic. And specially for Knight Foundation friends: use the discount code “garden” to get online tickets (either tent or lawn seating) for just $15!