Wednesday, June 24, 2026

Under a Telescope Dome, a French Cellist Has Helped Build a Concert Series That Sells Itself

By EDDIE RIVERA

Sunday Mt. Wilson Observatory shows are a delicious Pasadena secret

In 2017, Dan Coney, then a trustee at Mount Wilson Observatory, had a little idea. He invited a French cellist named Cécilia Tsan to climb the mountain, stand inside the dome that once housed the most powerful telescope in the world, and play.

He shot the video on his iPhone. They posted it to social media. Within a week it had 12,000 views.

“And I said, ‘Okay, let’s try to launch a series,’” Tsan recalled in a recent interview.

Nearly a decade later, the Sunday Afternoon Concerts in the Dome has become one of the more unlikely success stories in Southern California classical music. No advertising budget. No corporate sponsor. Sold out for two consecutive seasons. Tsan, who now serves as the series’ artistic director, programs each season and performs in select concerts herself.

The dome in question sheltered the 100-inch Hooker Telescope, the instrument Edwin Hubble used to establish that the universe is expanding. It was designed by Chicago architect D.H. Burnham, and its curved interior creates the kind of natural reverb that concert hall engineers spend fortunes trying to approximate. “The resonance is incredible,” Tsan said. “The shape of the dome makes it like an older cathedral in Europe. But it’s not too boomy. We still have clarity. We can still hear minute details.” Every musician who performs there, she said, wants to come back.

The 2026 season reflects her range as a curator. On July 5, a brass quintet featuring Dan Rosenboom and Rob Schear on trumpets, Laura Brenes on horn, Alex Iles on trombone, and Doug Tornquist on tuba will perform Bernstein’s “Suite from West Side Story” along with additional works.

Tsan said brass instruments in that space produce something startling. “You would not believe how gorgeous this is.”

On August 9, jazz pianist Tom Ranier leads a trio with guitarist Larry Koonse and bassist Darek Oles in a program billed as “Carte Blanche to Tom Ranier.” September 6 brings the Webern String Quartet, with Benjamin Hoffman and Chiai Tajima on violins, Alex Granger on viola, and Stella Cho on cello, performing Todd Mason’s String Quartet No. 5, “The Phoenix,” alongside Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 15, Op. 132.

The season closes October 4 with a piano quartet pairing Mahler and Brahms’s Piano Quartet in C minor, with David Kaplan on piano, Ambroise Aubrun on violin, Ariana Solotoff on viola, and Tsan herself on cello.

A Steinway grand now lives inside the dome year-round, donated by a USC professor after an audience member at a previous concert made the connection between his search for a nonprofit home for the instrument and Tsan’s series. A skilled piano technician restored it, and it made its dome debut last April. Its arrival opened new possibilities. Last summer’s concert featuring Sarah Gillis, the SpaceX Polaris mission astronaut and violinist, alongside Martin Chalifour, concertmaster of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, was the first time a piano had ever been played in the dome.

Tsan’s own story is as layered as the acoustics she has spent years curating. Her parents met at the Shanghai Conservatory, fled Communist China, married at St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome while studying at the Accademia di Santa Cecilia, and eventually settled in Paris, where her father, a composer gaining recognition in European musical circles, was killed under tragic circumstances soon after she was born. She was named after the Roman academy where her parents trained.

Her mother raised her in Paris as a young widow of 22. Among the family’s circle of friends were the Mas, the Chinese immigrant family whose son Yo-Yo would become the most celebrated cellist of his generation.

“One day I heard Yo-Yo play the cello and I cried,” Tsan said. “It was so beautiful.” The cello she first learned on was a gift from the priest who officiated at her father’s funeral. Yo-Yo Ma’s father introduced her to a teacher, and she eventually won the single open spot in the Paris Conservatory’s cello program out of 150 applicants that year.

She moved to Los Angeles in 1991 and has divided her time between France and Southern California ever since.

Each season, she makes a point of programming at least one ensemble of younger musicians. “People did that for me in Europe,” she said. “I think it’s very important.”

What she wants audiences to carry away from a Sunday afternoon under the dome is harder to quantify. “This world is so chaotic right now,” she said. “I can sense and feel that people need real emotions. They need to connect to each other. Music is a moment of communication, heart to heart, soul to soul.”

Tickets for remaining 2026 Sunday Afternoon Concerts in the Dome are available at mtwilson.edu/concerts. Access to the dome performance level requires climbing a 53-step staircase at an elevation of roughly one mile. Children under 6 are not admitted.