Meditation and music are both sourced from a deep place inside the human mind and spirit. They’re both tinged with something mysterious and primal. That’s why the collaboration between The Big Quiet and Okeechobee Music Festival felt so serendipitous: a celebratory fusion of music, community, and meditation. Okeechobee is a mindful festival thrown in the lush parkland of central Florida. The Big Quiet is a group meditation experience: hundreds or thousands of humans sit together in silence, joined through their breathing and intentionality. Okeechobee, however, was the first time The Big Quiet made an appearance at a major music festival.

In collaboration with violinist Sarah Neufeld of Arcade Fire, singer Sophie Hawley-Weld of Sofi Tukker Band, Taylor Rice and Kelcey Ayer of Local Natives and Jenavieve Varga, violinist, The Big Quiet went deep. Infused with music, thousands gathered for this collective meditation experience. Not to be kitsch but a unique energy, a sort of shared vibration ensued. Following such success, it’s even more interesting to read these interviews with the key players in Okeechobee’s Big Quiet from before the festival. They were equal parts stoked and uncertain.

We spoke with Jesse Israel, the founder of The Big Quiet, who explained the event in architectural detail. Then, we spoke with violinist Sarah Neufeld, about her relationship with meditation. Finally, we spoke to Sophie Hawley-Weld about the ways meditative thought flows outward from practice and into one’s creative life.