Meyer Sound Powers Bill Fontana’s Resonance at Grace Cathedral

Meyer Sound is providing the spatial audio foundation for renowned sound artist Bill Fontana’s Resonance, a site-specific installation created in collaboration with Grace Cathedral, San Francisco, as part of its ongoing commitment to innovative intersections of art, spirituality, and public life. The work transforms the iconic cathedral into a living, resonant instrument. Using live signals captured from the cathedral’s bells and organ pipes, the installation creates an immersive sound environment throughout the sacred space. “What you’re experiencing is the building becoming a listening device,” says Fontana. “It gives the impression of being almost like a living spirit in the building.”

Fontana developed the installation using sensors mounted to the cathedral’s bells and microphones placed inside silent organ pipes. The Meyer Sound system amplifies and spatializes those live signals, revealing subtle harmonic activity normally imperceptible to visitors and shaped by the surrounding environment. The installation is part of Grace Cathedral’s 2026 Year of Resonance, an exploration of sound, space, and spirituality through public art.

Listening to the Cathedral

Fontana traces the origins of the work to his studies with composer John Cage in the late 1960s. “I became very interested in the idea that the act of listening is a way of making music,” he explains. “I was interested in the idea of making artworks that were listening with a musical imagination.”

At Grace Cathedral, Fontana’s philosophy meets a space already shaped by listening. “One of the things we love about Grace Cathedral is the way sound decays,” says Malcolm Clemens Young, Dean of Grace Cathedral. “You play the last chord on the organ, or the choir has that last burst of energy, and then you listen as the sound rolls through the building, bounces off the back wall, and comes back to us. What Bill taught us is that there is no moment when that stops.”

Spatial Sound and Resonance

Meyer Sound Spatial & Digital Audio Specialist Leonard Blanche deployed eight pole-mounted ULTRA‑X20 point sources and four USW‑112P subwoofers throughout the cathedral. Using the Galileo GALAXY Network Platform and the Spacemap Go spatial sound design and mixing tool, Fontana worked with Blanche to route and shape signals from the bells and organ pipes across the vast interior, treating the architecture itself as part of the composition.

“The cathedral is very interesting because it’s an enormous resonant space,” says Fontana. “It’s the length of a football field. Meyer Sound has provided an amazing multi-channel loudspeaker system that is positioned strategically at different points in the space, with the idea of activating and interacting with the acoustics of the space.”

“The live signals from the bells and organ pipes are fed into Spacemap Go to create movement and spatialization throughout the room,” says Blanche. “We also used GALAXY’s delay feature as an artistic tool, not just a calibration tool, so the sounds feel distributed through time.”

A Living Soundscape

Resonance invites visitors to experience Grace Cathedral as an active listening environment shaped by architecture, sound, and place. Throughout the installation, sounds from the surrounding city—including cable cars, voices, and ambient noise—become part of the evolving sonic environment inside the cathedral.

“The first day Bill put headphones on me to listen to the organ pipes, there was a child playing outside in the labyrinth,” says Young. “You couldn’t hear the child’s voice directly; you heard the organ pipes responding to it. Every sound that you make, every time I preach a sermon, the pipes of the organ are vibrating sympathetically with that sound. Bill really helps us hear what’s already present, but which we may not notice.”

The project continues a decades-long collaboration between Fontana and Meyer Sound that has included installations at St. Peter’s Basilica, London’s Tate Modern, and beyond. “I’m doing works where I’m exploring musical patterns in the real world, in natural and urban human environments. And in order to kind of make that come to life, the loudspeaker systems are a crucial element,” says Fontana. “Meyer Sound has developed the most amazing tools to control large-scale loudspeaker installations. I feel very privileged that they will work with me on realizing these ideas.”

Resonance remains installed at Grace Cathedral through September 20, 2026, inviting visitors to experience the cathedral as a living resonant instrument.