At its heart, it is both music and experience: five compositions woven together with apothecary jars that release voices, winds, and field recordings when touched. Together, they form an immersive performance where memory and sound intertwine.
The work functions like an apothecary of sound—jars filled with traces and fragments preserved. Not a search for cures, but a way of remembering: each piece a tincture, a relic, a vessel for what might otherwise be lost.
The installation began in Japan as an idea of bottles as containers of memory, not medicine. Rebuilt in Vancouver with Arduinos, laser-cut boxes, and jars holding scraps of letters and memorabilia, it has grown into an evolving sonic archive. Lift a bottle, and a voice is released.
Now integrated with live performance, these voices and fragments fold directly into the five songs, creating a show where sound becomes a keeper of moments. Wildroot & Amber is both a collection and an invocation—a sonic apothecary shaped by rice fields, ritual, and memory. When I play, people can look, touch, and trigger samples. Those voices and fragments fold directly into the live songs weaving memory into the performance itself.
If you find meaning let that be yours.
Artist Biography
Lara Kroeker is a classically trained violinist and sound artist whose work blends ambient, electronic, and experimental traditions. She has written two albums during artist residencies—most recently in Japan, where she created Wildroot & Amber, and earlier in Iceland. Lara has toured across North America, performing with a wide range of bands and collaborators.
The project also features artwork by Angela Luo, a multidisciplinary artist Lara met during her time in Japan. Based in Queens, New York, and currently studying architecture at Cooper Union, Her practice moves fluidly across writing, sculpture, photography, painting, and poetry, always seeking to translate the ineffable into tangible form. Her visual interpretations of Wildroot & Amber mirror the same quiet, unfiltered honesty that shapes the music.