March 7, Saturday 8:00 pm
First Pres Santa Monica

Heitor Villa-Lobos
  Choro No.5 “Alma Brasileira” for piano (1925)
  Rudepoema for piano (1921-26)
Olivier Messiaen 
  The Necklace and Giving Thanks
    from Poems for Mi (1936) for soprano and piano
Heitor Villa-Lobos
  Bachianas Brasileiras No. 5 (1938-45) for soprano and eight cellos
Marius Constant 
  Pierre – Jewels (1980) for three solo cellos
Maurice Ravel
  Piano Trio in A minor (1914)

Danny Holt, piano
Jacquelynne Fontaine, soprano
Mark Alan Hilt, piano
Andrew Schulman, cello
Timothy Loo, cello
Robert Edward Thies, piano
Tereza Lucia Stanislav, violin
Cecilia Tsan, cello
  plus five more cellists to be announced.

The Brazilian taught himself to compose while inspired by the Amazon’s wet green mansions and the Caripunas Indians who lived there. In the City of Light, his intensely fragrant music with its atmosphere of longing and brutal rhythms struck Parisians as hypnotic and strange – a Rain Forest in Paris. A pair of early Messiaen songs joins the famous vocalise with cello octet in nuanced ecstasy. Using only three cellos, Constant leans over his jeweler’s glass to contemplate amethyst, ruby, sapphire, emerald, diamond and topaz. Ravel’s ever-surprising music manages to reflect cosmopolitan life, Malaysian verse, Basque dances and relentless nature showing through.