Tim Reidy visits Symphony Space, a concert hall in New York, for a centennial celebration of the music of Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992), a Catholic composer who, in the words of Father John Coleman, ...

On a bitterly cold night in January 1941, French composer Olivier Messiaen debuted a new work. It was an unusual premiere. Messiaen’s audience was an assembly of war prisoners and their guards. The ...

The life and work of the French composer Olivier Messiaen continue to fascinate. A mystic Catholic who sought inspiration from birdsong, vast empty canyons, stained-glass windows and his own ...

Song: "The Resurrected and the Song of the Star Aldebaran" (excerpt from "From the Canyons to the Stars...") Celebrating the 100th anniversary of Olivier Messiaen's birth shouldn't be just another ...

Olivier Messiaen played a leading role in the evolution of 20thcentury music In this classic interview the late composer talks on topics such as his love of nature and his fervent Christian faith two ...

Ask musicians to describe the work of Olivier Messiaen, the marvelously original composer whose centennial is being celebrated this year, and certain words keep turning up. Evocative. Imaginative.

“My faith is the grand drama of my life. I’m a believer, so I sing words of God to those who have no faith.” Vast as the heavens are that surround us, we seldom lift our gaze beyond the narrow ...

Berkeley photographer Deborah O’Grady has a picture in her studio of the French composer Olivier Messiaen, a Catholic mystic who transcribed bird songs and associated musical sounds with visual colors ...

The works of Olivier Messiaen are very much with us these days, yet I suspect that anyone who claims to know exactly how to feel about them isn't being entirely honest. The French composer, who died ...

Conductors, like most music lovers, keep discovering music that is new to them. My own latest discovery is the Turangalîla-Symphonie, a mind-blowing 75-minute orchestral piece by Olivier Messiaen, ...

The latest recording from Pygmalion, Messiaen’s “Quartet for the End of Time” and works written for Anne-Sophie Mutter are among our selections. One of the most esteemed singers of his era, he had a ...