Susan Alcorn (deceased)
From:
Baltimore, MD, USA
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Posted 7 Jan 2025 5:41 pm |
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Anyone who knows me knows that the music of Olivier Messiaen has been a big inspiration and influence on my musical endeavors, so I'll be playing a few of Messiaen's pieces, improvising on some of his other work, and also a few of my own compositions. Messiaen's music is difficult to play which is not easy to play on any instrument and especially the pedal steel guitar (though maybe it's easy for others, just difficult for me).
For those who are not familiar with Messiaen's music, he was a 20th century composer and a devout Roman Catholic whose music was mostly based on religious themes. To my ears, his music is ecstatic but not necessarily joyful. It's meant to convey a profound religious experience. However, Messiaen's music utilizes carnatic rhythms, gamelan harmonies, bird calls, a very personal sense of dissonance major chords with added dissonant notes, and tritones (the "Devil's interval"). Messiaen's chords usually don't resolve because the consonant and dissonant are already in every chord, producing a sort of stasis. Like the French composer of the previous generation, Claude Debussy movement is achieved through different means. His most famous composition is the "Quartet for the End of Time" composed and performed for the first time in a German prisoner of war camp during the second world war. To me, his music is deep, profound, and sort of puts my consciousness into a different space.
The performance will be at 8pm on January 21st (two weeks from today, as I write) at the Zürcher Gallery, 33 Bleeker Street in Manhattan.
If you are in the tri-state area anywhere near New York City and can make it out, it would be great to see you that night.
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www.susanalcorn.net
"So this is how you swim inward. So this is how you flow outwards. So this is how you pray."
- Mary Oliver |
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