SIGNALS ON HIGH
May 9, Saturday 8:00 PM
Barnum Hall, Santa Monica

Olympic Place at 4th Street, next to the 10 freeway onramp going east

Toru Takemitsu
 "Night Signal" from Signals from Heaven for brass - LA premiere
Arvo Pärt
  Magnificat for mixed chorus
Olivier Messiaen 
  Et Expecto Resurrectionem Mortuorum (And I expect the Resurrection of the
  Dead) for winds, brass, and percussion
Toru Takemitsu 
  "Day Signal" from Signals from Heaven - LA premiere
Olivier Messiaen
  Éclairs sur L'Au-delà (Flashes from the Beyond): "Abide in Love," for strings
  - LA premiere
  Un Sourire (A Smile) for strings, wind and percussion
  La Ville d'en haut (The City on High) for solo piano, winds, brass & percussion
  - LA premiere
 Chant des Dèportè (Song of the Deported) for large orchestra and chorus
  - US premiere

Gloria Cheng, piano
Jacaranda Chamber Singers
Jacaranda Festival Orchestra and Chorus
Mark Alan Hilt, conductor

Signals on High, the grand finale of The OM Century will involve over 200 performers in the U.S. premiere of Song of the Deported. Commissioned by Radio France in 1945 to commemorate the liberation of the concentration camps, this brief but huge multicolored anthem was believed lost after its first performance in Paris. At the outset, Takemitsu’s two fanfares frame Pärt’s wistful song of praise and Messiaen’s awe-inspiring requiem for the fallen of both World Wars. Among Messiaen’s last orchestral compositions, are two previously unheard in Los Angeles: a radiant adagio suffused with reconciling love, and a short piano concerto – a dawn chorus of dazzling birds within imaginary architecture. Then Song of the Deported will receive only the second performance since its premiere.

Critic Jean Wiéner, the renowned Jewish film composer of some 300 films made over 60 years by such directors as Renoir and Bresson, wrote about the premiere, “It was an emotional experience for me to listen to the performance… heroic and tender… this short blast of music, imploring yet glorious, is at once pitying and joyful… genius, like everything which comes from Messiaen.”