LA’s Sunset Ecléctico concert series finishes the summer on a high note

The future is bright for Sunset Ecléctico, a summer night concert series with a 16-year legacy that brings vibrant joy to the local community of Macarthur Park as laughter, dancing, singing and all-together unity is brought to them by live music through the Levitt Pavilion Los Angeles.

Levitt LA has been providing free and accessible live music to all. The music ranges from different genres and cultures in hopes of creating a safe space for diversity and inclusion.

This year’s summer concert series concluded on Sunday, September 3 with Sunset Ecléctico, a concert featuring three performers who uplifted the space with an upbeat atmosphere and a positive end to the summer season.

Allegra Padilla, executive director with Levitt Los Angeles, spoke about what closing the summer-long concerts meant for her. “Doing 16 years of programming here in MacArthur Park is a really important undertaking, and a very big thing,” Padilla said adding that their series of 32 concerts in three months would conclude with one final night of performances.

This year’s closing concert began with the opening act, Heart of Eisner Intergenerational Orchestra of Los Angeles(HOLA EIO), who brought out jazz and oldies with brilliant solos from each section. HOLA is an orchestra of musicians from all ages and backgrounds that represents the city in a multicultural experience. The audience was filled with supporting members of the orchestra continuing the unifying motif of community and empowerment throughout the community.

Following their performance was Nancy Sanchez y Las Chorizeras, who has appeared on the Netflix series Lincoln Lawyer and has been blowing up through their diverse range of music. They continued the show with their take on mariachi and even covered Selena Quintanilla songs to which the crowd sang along. The community showed their “gritos’' as they listened to the performance and danced around.

Providing events like these holds more culture within the community. “These events give people a sense of pride, MacArthur Park is such a historically significant space for especially the Latin American immigrant community and many others,” Padilla said. “It is important to not only preserve the cultures that exist at the moment but also make space for other newer cultural expressions across generations,” Padilla adds in reference to the future of MacArthur Park.

Beatriz Solis, daughter of the Mexican singer Marco Antonio Solis and singer Beatriz Adriana, was the headliner for the closing concert as she performed her own singles and covers of both La Sonora Dinamita and Selena Quintanilla.

Her music got the crowd moving and some even went on stage with Solis.

“I love this specific event because there’s a lot of need here for love and I’m so grateful that the city was able to put on this event that was completely free because I know that they took something with them,” said Solis.

Before and after the concert she was open and more than welcome to take pictures with her fans. At the end of the night, Solis expressed, “I feel very blessed to be able to close this festival today. I hope it’s not the last time because I had a blast.”

Andrea Ybarra, a concert attendee who is also a friend of the main performer Beatriz Solis, expressed the importance of the free accessible live events. “It’s important because the community doesn’t always have access to concerts like this and it just brings you one step closer to letting you know that you can also do that,” said Ybarra.

The final summer night concert was filled with a sense of unity within its community that is brought through music. As Solis had stated, “Music is universal” and when celebrated with others it can fill a city with enjoyment.