Urban Birds 2026

Urban Birds returns with a special “Best Of” festival, bringing together some of the most beloved performances, installations, and musical works from past editions of Synchromy’s site-specific celebration of birds, sound, and the urban ecosystem. Set within the trails, gardens, and hillside landscapes of Debs Park, this immersive event invites audiences of all ages to wander, listen, and discover music in unexpected places.

Alongside performances, the festival will feature family-friendly activities, including craft stations, interactive installations, and opportunities for visitors to learn about local birds and the environmental challenges they face.

Across the festival grounds, visitors will encounter interactive sound installations, live performances, and interdisciplinary artworks inspired by the birds and environments of Los Angeles. Musicians and artists will activate the landscape with works that blend composition, improvisation, environmental sound, and sculpture, transforming the park into a living instrument.

Featured installations include sound-producing artworks originally created by Ashton Phillips, Carolyn Chen, Cassia Streb, Tim Feeney, and Thadeus Frazier-Reed, where audiences can explore sculptural bird-speaker systems that modulate birdsong, a sonic clock marking the passing of the hours via noise textures, and other works that blur the boundary between nature and instrument.

The festival also revisits composer portraits inspired by Southern California birds, originally commissioned by Synchromy. As audiences roam the grounds like birdwatchers, they will encounter pop-up performances of works such as Mockingbird Hopscotch by Vera Ivanova, Heat Thrasher by Dante DeSilva, Monster by Jen Wang, and Red-Shouldered Hawk by Kenji Oh, performed among the trees and pathways of the park.

Voices from the Hill, a site-specific musical journey across Elephant Hill, will return as part of the program. This work guides audiences through stages of struggle, devastation, contemplation, and regeneration, featuring music by Guillermo Brown and poetry by Los Angeles Poet Laureate Luis Rodriguez, alongside visual installations built from natural materials found on the hillside.

The festival also highlights a video of Urban Birds: The Plasticene, an interspecies opera developed in collaboration with the International Bird Rescue wildlife clinic. Drawing from conversations with staff and patients at the clinic, the work confronts the environmental crises facing birds today while celebrating acts of care, rehabilitation, and release. The opera blends experimental music, dance, poetry, and electronic sound to explore the fragile relationship between humans, birds, and the ecosystems we share.

The evening culminates with Act V of Monsoon::Superbloom, a mytho-poetic eco-opera exploring cycles of extinction and renewal. On May 30th only, vocalist Dorian Wood will lead a new performance of this work, which draws on ancient flood myths from the Epic of Gilgamesh and the story of Noah’s Ark. A live sound installation of suspended “monsoon drops” will surround the audience with layered recordings of water, voices, and birdsong. As the sonic storm subsides, birds return and a speculative “superbloom” emerges, offering a vision of regeneration after catastrophe.

Urban Birds celebrates collaboration across species, disciplines, and communities. By bringing together artists, scientists, musicians, and audiences in shared outdoor spaces, the festival invites us to listen more deeply to the voices of the birds and landscapes that shape life in Los Angeles.

This concert is made possible in part by a grant from the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs and the City of Pasadena Department of Cultural Affairs.

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Host or Publisher Synchromy