BODY LIVE LIVE MUSIC: Topanga Tower

Part of LA Phil’s Ritual festival, curated by Esa-Pekka Salonen
Produced by LA Phil Insight and Liquid Music

A pilgrimage. A progression.

BODY LIVE LIVE MUSIC transforms the decommissioned Topanga Tower into a living instrument, invoking sound and movement as part of a communal artistic rite. Conceived and directed by creative partners Kate Nordstrum and Dimitri Chamblas, the experience unfolds across terrain and architecture, guiding audiences from daylight into dusk in a deliberate progression of gathering, activation, and release.

From city to sea, body to horizon, gesture to vibration, BODY LIVE LIVE MUSIC at Topanga Tower offers an intensifying arc of visceral perception.

Spring 2027. Program details to be announced August 2026.

About BODY LIVE LIVE MUSIC

BODY LIVE LIVE MUSIC is an ongoing venture dedicated to site-inspired performance projects that bring music, movement, and environment into dialogue. Through works created for artistic and natural landscapes, co-founders Kate Nordstrum and Dimitri Chamblas explore the relationship between body, sound, and place, guided by a commitment to 'shared reality'.

Chamblas and Nordstrum began collaborating in 2019, laying the foundation for the artistic partnership that has evolved into BODY LIVE LIVE MUSIC. Current projects include an expansive staging of environmentalist composer John Luther Adams' Crossing Open Ground for 40 musicians and a new commission for the Los Angeles Philharmonic's Rituals festival, where the decommissioned Topanga Tower will be transformed into a living instrument through sound and movement.

Combined, their work has been presented by leading cultural institutions (Opéra national de Paris, The Barbican, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Brooklyn Academy of Music, MOCA Los Angeles, Tate Modern, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Carnegie Hall, Musée du Louvre, Walker Art Center, Performa, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, MASS MoCA, Ultima Festival, Centre Pompidou, Center for the Art of Performance UCLA, Montpellier Dance Festival) and iconic brands (Chanel, Longchamp, Dom Perignon, Van Cleef & Arpels) in natural sites, historic halls, abandoned structures, floating cinemas, frozen lakes, fashion runways, public parks, and architectural wonders.

About Topanga Tower

SALT House was originally built as a telecommunications relay tower connecting long distance telephone and television signals from Los Angeles to the rest of the country. It was abandoned in the late 1990s as this technology became obsolete. The owners bought it after a period of neglect when it was covered in graffiti and surrounded by broken glass and trash. The main goal of their renovation is to engage the solid mass with a dark interior with the surrounding land, air and sky. The outcome maintains the integrity of a brutalist, formal concrete building while simultaneously filling the space with light; and physical and visual access to the outdoors. Employing an editing and tending process, the gardens utilize only native rocks, soil and plants. The landscape is an evolving and organic experiment that reflects and engages the surrounding Chaparral ecosystem.