There’s a pocket in L.A. State Historic Park where city life almost fades away. It’s near the back of the 32-acre park, just beyond sculptor Anna Sew Hoy’s bronze arches, “Psychic Body Grotto,” between the track that runs around the periphery of the park and the small creek bed that fills during storms. Here, the trees are large, at least by the standards of downtown Los Angeles. Even though many of their leaves have already fallen and dried, there is still plenty of shade and a cool breeze rustles through them. The reminder that we’re still in L.A. comes every five to ten minutes, when A Line trains whizz past the park to and from the Chinatown Metro station. 

L.A. State Historic is my local park, so I’m here often, but on this particular Sunday, I stopped by for music. A few times a year, around the full moon, the local arts and culture non-profit Clockshop, the same group that puts on the annual Kite Festival, hosts a music and sound event called Listening By Moonrise. For the July session, they teamed up with Living Earth, a fairly new collective that produces events that bring together performance and local nature.  On this occasion, the performers are Salenta + Topu, a jazz duo that met in Brooklyn, but are now based in L.A., and Low Leaf, who makes impossible-to-categorize music with, primarily, a harp and synthesizer.

Listening By Moonrise is the sort of music event people might not associate with L.A. State Historic Park. Often, what brings people people here are high-priced music festivals and pseudo-raves that render the park at least partially inaccessible to the public for days at a time. It’s really annoying if you live and/or work in the neighborhood and particularly ironic given the park’s history (which I wrote about when it opened and can no longer find online) and the large on site installation that reads “A park is made for by people.” But, I digress. In contrast to spending a couple hundred bucks to hear someone play a totally unnecessary PLUR-ed out remix of “Murder on the Dance Floor” that blasts all the way down to the Grand Star’s patio (sorry, am I projecting?), Listening By Moonrise is an intimate event where the music interacts with its surroundings instead of overpowering them. 

Moreover, Listening By Moonrise really is a community event. You can just show up and find a space on the grass to listen. There’s no cover, although they do accept donations, and it’s all-ages. Some people bring their dogs, who are welcome in the park as long as they’re on a leash. There was a library on site with books you could read during the event and a couple concession stands. I got a lavender ice tea from Generous Herbs for $4.50, which is a more-or-less normal price for a cold drink downtown right now. 

I arrived a little after 5 p.m., just before the performances began. Jazz filled that little pocket of the large park. A crowd of people spread out on blankets and towels. A few sat like yoga instructors with straight backs and crossed legs, others lay down under one of the trees. Plenty had already taken off their shoes, although you don’t need to do that to enjoy Listening By Moonrise. I didn’t. I’m far to skittish about accidentally stepping in something disgusting to take my chances with that. 

Salenta, a pianist, and Topu, a cellist, played first and their partially improvised performance intertwined with the world that immediately surrounded us while, at the same time, evoking imagined scenarios. The bird chirps that I heard were real, but the sound of ice cracking and thumping footsteps were aural fictions. I let my imagination go wild with images from movies that don’t exist because the music invited that. I’m loath to refer to music as cinematic, because that is now a term frequently misused to describe anything long and instrumental that kind of, sort of sounds like Hans Zimmer. However, when I listened to Salenta + Topu, I did hear similarities to jazz-influenced film composers of the 1960s and 1970s. 

Low Leaf is the solo project of producer and multi-instrumentalist Angelica-Marie that has been ongoing for over a decade and has taken on many different sounds and rhythms in that time. This was an ambient set, one designed for possible meditation, so the music played out like a cross between her recently-released EP, Red Moon, and a soundbath. In this semi-secluded portion of the park, she moved back and forth between assorted instruments, including a laptop, a harp and a large, vintage synthesizer (Prophet-5, I think?). Occasionally, she took to the mic, using the voice to add texture to the collage rather than sing a song. It’s an amalgamation of what sounded like field recordings mixed with cosmic synths and the shimmering harp. I understood why so many people would lie down for a concert and do the same. This wasn’t a show and the stage didn’t demand your attention. The music that was performed was there to help you turn your focus elsewhere, whether that was the gentle sway of the leaves above of us, or the tiny colony of ants marching amidst tufts of grass. Music isn’t just something you hear or something that prompts you to move. It’s a tool you can use to help see your world and I think Listening By Moonrise gets that more than most do.

Liz O. is an L.A.-based writer and DJ. Read her recently published work and check out her upcoming gigs.

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