[photo credit: Norton Simon Museum]
The performance is part of Golden Hour: Music in the Garden, a series of Friday-afternoon concerts the Pasadena museum brought back this year after its Sculpture Garden spent roughly 10 months of 2025 closed for renovation. The July 31 session, free with admission, is the third of four dates on the summer calendar.
The ensemble pairs Indradeep Ghosh on violin, Chris Votek on cello and Neelamjit Dhillon on tabla, playing from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. among the garden’s Henry Moore bronzes. According to the museum, the afternoons are casual rather than formal, and the program is recommended for visitors of all ages. Guests can pick up drawing supplies, buy light bites and beverages at the Garden Café, and settle onto the grass. No outside food or drink is permitted.
The series is programmed by musician Masatoshi Sato, whose 2026 lineup ranges from a jazz quartet to string players to the July North Indian ensemble. Seating in the café is first come, first served, and the museum recommends bringing a blanket, since tables and chairs are limited.
The setting has a history of its own. The Norton Simon has been a Pasadena institution since 1975, when it took over the former Pasadena Art Museum. Its Sculpture Garden was designed by landscape designer Nancy Goslee Power in the late 1990s, with a design the museum says was intended to evoke Claude Monet’s garden at Giverny. The garden closed in January 2025, during the museum’s 50th-anniversary year, for a campus-wide exterior project that, the museum says, rebuilt the pond and refreshed the landscape and plantings. The garden reopened last year; the concert series returned this summer after sitting out 2025.
Golden Hour: Music in the Garden takes place on Friday, July 31, 2026, from 4:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. in the Sculpture Garden at the Norton Simon Museum, 411 West Colorado Boulevard, Pasadena, California 91105, at the corner of Colorado and Orange Grove Boulevards. The concert is free with museum admission, which is $20 for adults, $15 for visitors 62 and older, and free for members, students with identification and everyone 18 and under. Limited free parking is available at the museum, with additional parking from 4:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. at the Elks Lodge lot across the street at 400 West Colorado Boulevard; the museum encourages ridesharing or public transportation. For more information, call (626) 449-6840, email educate@nortonsimon.org or visit nortonsimon.org.
The garden was rebuilt to hold water and light. For two hours on a Friday evening, it will hold music, too.
Norton Simon Museum — “Golden Hour” | Date: Friday, July 31 |📍 Norton Simon Museum, 411 W. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena | 🔗 https://www.nortonsimon.org/calendar NBC Los Angeles
