Event details
Location: Dixon Place, 161 A Chrystie St, New York, NY 10002 (Delancy St & Chrystie St)
Nearest subway stations: Bowery (J/Z), Grand St (B/D), 2nd Ave (F)
Doors open at 7:00pm, performance at 7:30pm.
Covid policy: Proof of vaccination is required to enter the building, and all guests must wear a face mask except when eating or drinking in designated areas.
Dress code: casual
Drinks can be purchased at the bar, open before and after the performance.
This is a design workshop presentation. We will be experimenting with lighting and sound design to see how they can enhance the music, the story, and the experience. We welcome your thoughts and feedback-- please come talk to us over a drink after the show!
Equity Approved Showcase
About the program
How do we find light in times of darkness? Centered around the music of Olivier Messiaen, Salon Séance: The End of Time tells the story of four musicians captured by the Nazis, who transformed devastation into a new beginning. Let our séance take you to them, to experience their stories and the music they created together: Quartet for the End of Time.
Performers
David Fung, piano
Michael Katz, cello
Mari Lee, violin
Susannah Perkins, actor*
Mingzhe Wang, clarinet
*Member of Equity
Creative Team
Mari Lee, producer
Simon Angseop Lee, researcher
Johnny G. Lloyd, playwright
Jay Stull, director
Collaborators
Johnny Gasper, sound design
Michael O’Connor, lighting design
Music by Olivier Messiaen
Olivier Messiaen (December 10, 1908 – April 27, 1992) was a French composer, organist, and ornithologist. On the fall of France in 1940 Messiaen was made a prisoner of war, and while incarcerated he composed his Quatuor pour la fin du temps(“Quartet for the end of time”) for the four available instruments, piano, violin, cello, and clarinet. The piece was first performed by Messiaen and fellow prisoners to an audience of inmates and prison guards. Messiaen was appointed professor of harmony soon after his release in 1941, and professor of composition in 1966 at the Paris Conservatoire.
Messiaen’s musical style absorbed many exotic musical influences such as Indonesian gamelan and rhythms from ancient Greek and from Hindu sources. He travelled widely, and he wrote works inspired by such diverse influences as Japanese music, the landscape of BryceCanyon in Utah, and the life of St. Francis of Assisi. Many of his compositions depict what he termed “the marvellous aspects of the faith”, drawing on his unshakeable Roman Catholicism. Messiaen experienced a mild form of synaesthesia manifested as a perception of colours when he heard certain harmonies.
Messiaen found birdsong fascinating; he believed birds to be the greatest musicians and considered himself as much an ornithologist as a composer. He incorporated birdsong transcriptions into a majority of his music. His innovative use of colour, his personal conception of the relationship between time and music, his use of birdsong, and his intent to express profound religious ideas, all combine to make it almost impossible to mistake a composition by Messiaen for the work of any other western composer.