Performance at Walt Disney Concert Hall, Los Angeles, CA; May 5, 2026

It’s a treat to be able to visit the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Downtown Los Angeles designed by Frank Gehry. It’s an even bigger treat if you get to attend a concert there. In an effort to expose myself to more culture and to experience new things, I bought these tickets for $25 during Black Friday 2025 based on the description that they will use plants as instruments.

Yes, you read that right, serious students of music will be using plants as instruments.

While the night consisted of orchestrated musical scores and duo pieces from Gabriela Smith, celloist Gabriel Cabezas, and blues piano playing from the legendary Billy Childs, there was one piece that used plants as instruments. It required five musicians as they played John Cage’s “Branches.” Before we get further in, a bit of background.

Gabriela Smith is the conductor and leader of tonight’s pieces. She is an environmentalist who lives in the Pacific Northwest and often cites the ocean and the surrounding environs as her muse. She and Cabezas played a piece from her album “Lost Coast,” an atmospheric piece combined with cello playing which masterfully used the Walt Disney Hall’s acoustics by having members of the Los Angeles symphony play percussionist bells which mimicked the sound of ships sailing in the ocean and their bells.

As Smith speaks about her own rewilding efforts at her property, from converting the concrete spaces back into something more natural, you get the sense that she is passionate about her environmentalism. She also invited Tree People to set up an information table at tonight’s event. She discussed John Cage’s “Branches” as a musical score that is full of creative freedom but with several specific requests of plants as instruments including cactus and palm fronds.

Recordings and pictures are not allowed during the performance so my pictures are of the static set up before the performance. Melons were thumped, palm fronds were waved, nuts were shaken. So how do you play a cactus? They are picked with some performers wearing gloves while Smith opts not to. Can you actually hear it? With amplification and many performers, they become an echo of each other. With skilled musicians, it’s a cacophony of sounds that sound musical.

Smith includes a delightful joke in the show, citing everyone’s favorite instrument as the “Amplified Cactus.”

If you’re reading this, you probably like plants or have an interest in plants. With this musical piece, I feel like plants have completed a rarity. They have successfully co-opted all your five senses from seeing, tasting, looking, touching, and now hearing. When you go into nature, can you feel their vibration? What song are the leaves in the trees singing? What little sounds are your tomatoes expressing?