Westside Voices Brings ‘All That’s Jazz’ to Pacific Palisades

By SARAH SHMERLING | Editor-in-Chief

A chance meeting during a game of pickleball has brought “All That’s Jazz” to Pacific Palisades.

Westside Voices will perform an outdoor concert on Sunday, July 10, starting at 3:30 p.m. in the backyard of a Rustic Canyon home.

Community members are invited to “join this award-winning a cappella group for an hour of great music, fun and some surprises.”

Founding member Harris Levey, a resident of Venice, explained that the group was formed more than 16 years ago, bringing together a “diverse group of professional and top amateur singers,” according to its website.

Levey, a professional musician, originally saw an advertisement for a local community chorus and said to himself: “Oh, well, that might be fun.” After several years of performing with choruses of that nature, he called up a good friend he had sung with previously and put together a group of their own.

They designed Westside Voices to be a casual a cappella group—launching with 12 voices, three singers on each part.

“We’ve got several original members,” Levey said of the group now. “We’ve had people coming in and out over the years … and for the past year or so, we’ve been working with eight voices. We’ve done several concerts and they’ve gone pretty well.”

Today, the eight-member ensemble features Andrea Kingery, Joanne Rachford, Michele Miller, Karen Ricks, Stacy Robin, Rich Falstrom, Levey, Ken Waltzer and Joe Wise. Membership currently spans from Palos Verdes to Torrance, with past members coming from as far as Palmdale. They meet to practice in Westchester.

“We just do music in a way that we all want to,” Levey shared.

Booking the concert in the Palisades happened by way of Levey, who is a tennis player, visiting the neighborhood to play pickleball.

“The people of the Palisades are so nice and welcoming,” he shared. “Pickleball is taking over the world.”

Levey explained that one of the people he played with offered her house, which has a nice backyard, for an outdoor concert.

“So we did a concert in her backyard,” Levey explained of the first performance. “We had a really nice attendance, it went very well. So she said, ‘Let’s do it again.’ The folks of the Palisades seem to enjoy it.”

Songs that will be performed during the upcoming “All That’s Jazz” show include “Route 66,” “I Got Rhythm,” “Ain’t Misbehavin‘” and more. Tickets are $15 and available at westsidevoices.com.

Levey shared that the group is currently looking for new members. Interested parties are encouraged to reach out.

“One of the things that sets us apart is even though we’re high-quality musicians—reasonably high quality—we put on a fun show,” Levey shared. “There will be humor involved. There’ll be some audience interaction. It’s not your normal choral group.”