Beachwood Canyon Summer Solstice Soirée

Welcome to the Beachwood Canyon Summer Solstice Soirée at Besant Lodge, a historic 100 year-old church in the heart of the Hollywood Hills. Join us for an all-ages evening of acoustic music, poetry, community, and celebration. Light refreshments will be served. Welcome the longest day of the year with good vibes and great company. Get ready for an unforgettable night filled with laughter, music, and memories.

Ride share is encouraged. Free parking is available in the neighborhood or (with short walk) behind Beachwood Cafe and Market.

ABOUT THE PERFORMERS:

SINGER-SONGWRITER SARA MELSON:

Since her debut on Nettwerk Records, LA-based folk songstress Sara Melson continues to soothe, heal, inspire and uplift with her dreamy, anthemic folk-pop and introspective songwriting. Her unique and arresting voice cracks and pierces with vulnerability and strength, leading Yahoo Music to call her “one of the most fearless singer-songwriters on the planet.” Echoing a blend of Cat Power, Mazzy Star, and Carole King, she writes, records, and performs on piano and guitar, solo and with her band. Her songs have been widely featured on film and television, including Grey’s Anatomy and a national Chevy campaign for the Winter Olympics.

Sara’s music has been critically praised by Huffington Post, Magnet, PopMatters, American Songwriter, Blackbook, Variety, Yahoo Music, Wide Open Country, Glide Magazine, USA Today, and LAWeekly, and has been featured on iHeartRadio, KCSN, KCRW, American Airlines, and the Apple iTunes homepage. She has shared the stage with Moby, Ben Folds, Juliana Hatfield, Silversun Pickups, Lissie, Ben Lee, Mojave 3, Neil Halstead, Marc Broussard, and many others, singing backing vocals on KCRW’s Morning Becomes Eclectic with Mojave 3 and the Dandy Warhols. She performed alongside Jim James, Margaret Cho, Dawes, Moby, and Noah Cyrus for Sweet Relief's Musicians for Fire Relief benefit concert.

A Harvard graduate and former professional ballerina, Sara is a member of the Recording Academy and has released three full-length albums, three EPs, and numerous singles. “Wound Too Tight”, a collaboration with Rami Jaffee of the Foo Fighters, has been described as “a meditative trip through a hypnotic and ethereal sonic landscape”. In February 2024, four of Sara's songs were selected alongside a list of the greats of musical history to be included in the Arch Mission Foundation's Lunar Library, which landed a catalog of musical works on the moon’s surface aboard the spacecraft Odysseus, via SpaceX and Intuitive Machines. She is a recipient of the “Language of the Cosmos” artist grant sponsored by the Department of Cultural Affairs of the City of Los Angeles in conjunction with NASA/JPL, for which she created a space-themed performance piece for her song, “Underneath a Big Full Moon", from her upcoming new album.

Prior, as an actor, Sara guest-starred in numerous teen roles on classic television shows, including Frasier, The Wonder Years, M**der She Wrote, and Beverly Hills, 90210. She is an accomplished yogi, an environmental and social advocate, and a volunteer for non-profit Art of Elysium, bringing music to seniors, the unhoused, and children in under-served communities. Her upcoming psychedelic indie-folk full-length album, Elixir, is due out in late 2025. The first single from her album, "This Must Be The Place" will be released on June 20, 2025.

POET MANDY KAHN:

Mandy Kahn is a poet based in Los Angeles. She’s the author of three poetry collections, Holy Doors (Hat & Beard Editions, 2023), Glenn Gould’s Chair (Eyewear Publishing, 2017) and Math, Heaven, Time (Eyewear Publishing, 2014). Kahn’s poems have been included in the Best American Poetry anthology series and in former poet laureate Ted Kooser’s syndicated newspaper column American Life in Poetry.

Kahn has given readings at Cambridge University, the London Review Bookshop and Shoreditch House in the UK, at Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco, and at the New School in New York.

She is also an opera librettist; she’s written several works with Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Ellen Reid, was a librettist for MacArthur grantee Yuval Sharon’s opera Hopscotch, and has received commissions from the new music orchestra Wild Up. Her work as a librettist has been performed by orchestras around the world, including Santa Fe Opera and the Breakout Music Ensemble in Berlin.

Kahn has received commissions to write poetry that responds to fine art exhibitions at the Craft and Folk Art Museum and at Bridge Projects, and has given readings at each.

In addition to writing books, Kahn creates works of interactive literature she calls immersive poems. She builds these immersive works by combining lines of formal poetry with musical technique, audience participation and a cast of performers. She presented a concert of immersive poems at the Getty Museum in a program called “Gateways to Peace,” and also gave a concert of her immersive poems at the Barrick Museum in Las Vegas.

Mandy Kahn has been interviewed by BBC Radio, the Los Angeles Review of Books and KPFK/Pacifica Radio. She’s been profiled in magazines including Flaunt, Issue and Malibu.

Kahn’s poetry is the subject of Courtney Sell’s feature-length documentary Peace Piece: The Immersive Poems of Mandy Kahn, which was released by IndiePix and is available on many streaming platforms, and also as a DVD.

A devoted advocate for peace, Kahn began presenting a monthly series of peace-themed concerts at the Philosophical Research Society in June of 2019. In 2021, Kahn presented a peace concert at Meditation Mount in Ojai in conjunction with Dot Maver, director of the National Peace Academy, Fumi Johns Stewart, executive director of May Peace Prevail On Earth International, and Michael Lindfield, Meditation Mount’s board president. She has been a featured speaker at many peace events, including at Peace Week, World Unity Week and One Planet Peace Forum.

In September of 2020, Kahn began hosting Peace Class, a free, weekly Zoom-based gathering that brings participants together to build inner peace and world peace in community. Now in its third year, Peace Class welcomes participants from around the world at its Wednesday night meetings, which are presented by the Philosophical Research Society in Los Angeles. At each Peace Class, Kahn gives a talk on one aspect of the nature of peace. She is currently in the process of turning these talks into a book.

Kahn served as the Artist-in-Residence at the Philosophical Research Society from 2019 through 2021, and then became the PRS’s Writer-in-Residence. She now serves as a PRS Contributing Writer.

Kahn’s first book was Collage Culture: Examining the 20th Century’s Identity Crisis (JRP/Ringier, 2011), which she coauthored with Aaron Rose. Collage Culture was designed by Brian Roettinger.

Mandy Kahn holds a degree in English from U.C. Berkeley. She lives in Los Angeles, where she was also born and raised.

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