The iconic California Tower can be seen from miles away, but at noon you’ll hear it with a bell-like mini concert that passerby's like Adam Glass cherish.
"Someone's spending some time to put a little cheer instead of just the 12 bells,” Glass says.
And that someone is Gina Seashore, who’s been playing the noontime chimes since 2009.
“Music has always come back to me in various ways," Seashore says.
The magic happens two flights of stairs up the California Tower in a room filled with echo and a small window emitting sunlight coming over Balboa Park.
Gina pre-records the tunes on the 100-bell symphonic carillon installed in the 1940s. She’s only the fourth person ever to play on it.
The chimes are then amplified through the tower’s hidden speakers. Surprising many who assume the melodies come from cast bells — when they’re actually created on a small electronic carillon.
When Gena first got the job more than a decade ago — she'd never played a carillon before, but she did come from a musical background, having started it all with the accordion at 6 years old. But with a couple weeks time, she learned how to master the carillon.
"You really have to think like a bell," Seashore says. "Bells have lots and lots of overtones, and so I cannot come up here and just play a piano piece of music, I have to arrange it and simplify it way down because otherwise you get just metallic mush.”
Over the years she’s recorded hundreds of songs, all of which are saved on a memory card, but it was lost during the tower’s 2019 earthquake safety renovation.
"That was kind of heartbreaking," Seashore says. But she recorded them again, and keeps adding new ones for holidays, seasons, and popular requests.
And she has no plans to stop bringing music to the park any time soon.
"I use music as a tool to create community and fun and joy," Seashore says. "The joy, the community and the fun has always been a part of my life and I think we all need a little joy right now.”
And while many visitors come to Balboa Park for the museums, the gardens, or the views, at noon, they also get something else. A daily tradition that’s become part of the park’s soundtrack.
And during Women’s History Month, it’s a reminder that sometimes history isn’t just written in books, it’s heard echoing through San Diego’s most iconic tower.
