Celebrating 30+ Years of Wild and Scenic Music

Praise for the Taos Chamber Music Group!

“One of the great treasures of Taos” -The Taos News 
“Big magic…silken ensemble playing” -Albuquerque Journal
“A remarkable concert of juxtaposed styles” -Horse Fly 
“Depth, vitality and inventiveness” -Spencer Beckwith, KUNM

Press Release

Taos Chamber Music Group presents
Messiaen Musings
at the Harwood Museum of Art in Taos
Saturday, 03/29/2025 5:30 p.m. & Sunday, 03/30/25 3:00 p.m. (matinee)

Taos Chamber Music Group is pleased to present the Montage Music Society on March 29 and 30, 2025 at the Harwood Museum in Taos, NM. Their program centers around Olivier Messiaen’s monumental chamber work, “Quartet for the End of Time.” Written and premiered in Stalag VIIIA in 1941, a German prisoner of war camp, this eight-movement work for violin, cello, clarinet, and piano is considered one of Messiaen’s most significant chamber music works. One cannot listen to this work without being deeply moved. His vision of life, death, and immortality is a musical journey like no other. About this work, theater director, Peter Sellars remarks,” In the face of such hate, in this work, Messiaen did not ask, ‘Why, O Lord?’ He said, ‘I love you.’ ”

The program begins with Messiaen’s Vocalise from Concert à Quatre (1991 arr. by Graeme Steele Johnson for clarinet, violin, cello, and piano). About his arrangement Graeme says, “I always like to frame it as composed in 1935, when Messiaen was in his twenties, and orchestrated in 1991, the year before he died — understated bookends to a life marked by larger-than-life works like the Quartet for the End of Time.”

Montage Music Society, founded in Boston in 2005, focuses on featuring compositions inspired by visual art. To celebrate their 20 th anniversary, the concert will feature the first work they commissioned: Berklee College of Music composer Andrew List to write a piece inspired by a centerpiece of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts collection. He chose Paul Gauguin’s large mural, “Noa Noa” and entitled it Noa Noa, A Gauguin Tableau. It premiered in 2008.
Written for violin, clarinet, and piano, it asks the following questions, “Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?”. The mural will be projected behind the musicians during the performance.

Pablo Casal’s composition Song of the Birds (El Cant dell Ocells) will draw attention to Messiaen’s use of bird song in virtually everything he wrote. It is a traditional Catalan Christmas song and lullaby. The most widely heard version of the song was performed by Catalan cellist, Lluis Claret and soprano, Victoria de Los Angeles at the 1992 Summer Olympics closing ceremony just before the Olympic cauldron was extinguished.

The performers for this program are Stephanie Sant’ Ambrogio (violin), Walter Haman (cello), Graeme Steele Johnson (clarinet), and TCMG core member and Founder/Director of Montage Music Society Debra Ayers (piano).

For more information on artists and performances, visit taoschambermusicgroup.org. For tickets visit taoschambermusicgroup.org or harwoodmuseum.org.

Do you want to help bring wild and scenic music to Taos? Email info@taoschambermusicgroup.org for more information and volunteer opportunities.