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This year the Festival takes over all of Roy Thomson Hall with acrobats from Zero Gravity Circus; intermission chats with visiting composers led by the TSO Composer Advisor Gary Kulesha; as well as post-concert musical performances by Indian jazz fusion groups Attar Project, Autorickshaw and RagaWrap. In addition, for the first time ever, a live video feed of the concerts will be projected simultaneously on two screens set up above the stage.
Choosing Messiaen for this season was easy: apart from the fact that 2008 is the hundredth anniversary of the composer's birth, his works are unlike any others ever composed, and are spectacular crowd-pleasers without being, in any way, over-exposed. Messiaen was active as the organist of the Église de la Trinité in Paris almost until his death, traveled widely throughout his career, and worked closely with students, conductors, and composers all over the world over the course of his long life–a life enhanced by his love of nature and religion.
The Festival will open with Messiaen's Oiseaux exotiques and Couleurs de la cité céleste (April 9). This concert will also feature Malcolm Forsyth's Accordion Concerto and noted pianist Yefim Bronfman playing the Canadian première of the Piano Concerto written for him by Los Angeles Philharmonic music director Esa-Pekka Salonen.
Messiaen's Trois petites liturgies de la Présence Divine will anchor the second evening's repertoire (April 12) which also includes the Canadian première of Philip Glass's Harpsichord Concerto and the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra and the TSO's co-commission of Jeffrey Ryan's Equilateral, triple concerto for violin, cello, piano and orchestra, featuring the Gryphon Trio.
The Festival finale features Messiaen's Turangalîla Symphony and Jacques Hétu's Concerto for Organ and Orchestra (April 16 & 17), featuring Olivier Latry, organist from the Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris. -- www.tso.ca
Posted April 9th, 2008 by ruzik_tuzik
