PACIFIC PALISADES, Calif. — Like a haunting reversion-to-nature scene, the quiet seaside community of Pacific Palisades appeared surprisingly green and lush Jan. 7 after winter rains. It was eerily quiet, the rare ostinato of construction hammers and whir of power screwdrivers overwhelmed by the vastness of empty lots, like silent gravesites. Exactly one year after a catastrophic fire that claimed 12 lives and destroyed 6,833 homes (the largest fire ever in Los Angeles in terms of structures lost), Pacific Palisades courageously mounted a one-year commemoration concert at the community’s Saint Matthew’s Episcopal Church, whose original building was destroyed by wildfire in 1978.
As Thomas Neenan, a member of St. Matthew’s Music Guild Board of Directors, bluntly confirmed, the concert was largely the work of one person — violinist and local resident Anne Akiko Meyers. “Anne has been the driving force behind everything that’s happened today,” he said.
The arson-caused firestorm that destroyed the neighborhood on Jan. 7, 2025, had direct effects on Los Angeles’ musical community. Not only did countless musicians lose homes and instruments, some historically significant, but it also took down local landmarks like Belmont Music Publishers, founded by Arnold Schoenberg’s son, home to thousands of now destroyed Schoenberg scores and parts. Meyers’ home, though damaged, was largely spared.
The violinist’s identification with Pacific Palisades, where she’s lived since 2016, runs deep. She was raised in Los Angeles, where one of her daughters attended the St. Matthews Parish School. Proceeds from the January 7 concert supported four arts organizations, and Meyers serves on the Board of Trustees of The Juilliard School and The Dudamel Foundation.
In that community spirit, in the weeks after the fire, Meyers commissioned a commemorative piece from Grammy-winning composer Eric Whitacre, who grew up in Pacific Palisades and, coincidentally, was visiting the day after the fire erupted. After singing in Mozart’s Requiem in college, Whitacre decided to dedicate himself to choral composition and earned a master’s in composition at the Juilliard School under John Corigliano and David Diamond. His works — which include settings of poems by Octavio Paz, James Joyce, Robert Frost, Dylan Thomas, and Emily Dickinson — have been performed by the London Symphony Orchestra, Chanticleer, the London Philharmonic, and The Tallis Scholars.
Whitacre’s commemorative piece for Pacific Palisades, The Pacific Has No Memory, takes it name from lines in the movie The Shawshank Redemption, in which the character Andy Dufresne (played by Tim Robbins) says, “You know what the Mexicans say about the Pacific? They say it has no memory. That’s where I want to live the rest of my life. A warm place with no memory.”
A mere eight-minutes long, The Pacific Has No Memory, premiered at Carnegie Hall in May 2025, carries the well-crafted, emotional force of a Shostakovich string quartet.
Whitacre’s vivid description of the fire seems to have inspired the searing quality of his piece: “There is something truly unique about losing one’s world to a fire: It burns everything, completely and utterly. There is literally nothing left to mourn.”
Broadly, he gives to Meyers the voice of the mourning, devastated survivor or community and to the supporting Pacific Strings (ably led by harpsichordist Lucinda Carver) the immersing, uplifting oceanic tide that seems to offer the easing salve.
It opens with sorrowful, attenuated ascending figures in the violins, which are suddenly met by a hopeful upwelling in the full strings before Meyers enters with an aching, high-register melody personifying pain and sorrow. Surging oceanic notes from low to high strings seem to support Meyers as her agonized, questioning song unfolds. She drives toward a keening outburst before the enveloping, buoying strings engage her in an extended ascending interplay that leads her finally to a hard-earned place of peace — or forgetting. Meyer’s performance was a master class in how to use technical skill and sincerity of purpose to deliver emotional truth without a hint of the cloying or maudlin. It’s hard to imagine a better musical expression of loss, pain, and memory or a more healing balm to collective trauma.
The rest of the concert was built around J.S. Bach: Charles Gounod’s orchestration of Bach’s Prelude No. 1 in C major as a setting of the Ave Maria prayer; LA composer Jeff Kryka’s arrangement of the second movement of Bach’s Orchestral Suite No. 3 in D major, otherwise known as “Air on the G String”; and his Violin Concerto in A minor. Each sustained the concert’s “Remembrance, Healing and Renewal” theme, and the sweet serenity of Meyers’ weaving, floating lines above the bass ostinato in the Andante and the excitement and color she injected into the Allegro assai were transcendent moments.
It was an emotionally charged evening. Looking exhausted and pained, Meyers referred in her brief comments to “this incredibly moving day” and called for her fellow Palisadians to go “hand in hand to keep the fabric [of the community] alive. The fabric is woven with music. I really believe this.” Music heals, but this was the rare feat of healing channeled through and manifested in a single musician, Meyers, who commissioned the piece, organized the concerts, and delivered a performance of generosity and grace.
