All Messiaen All the Time -- University of Chicago's festival coup

The brilliant Shauna Quill, executive director of Chicago's leading chamber music entity, The University of Chicago Presents, has outdone even her own high levels of programming quality and innovation with a ten-day festival -- kicking off tonight -- in honor of the centenary of the birth -- in Avignon on 10 December 1908 --of the sui generis Olivier Messiaen (left).

Concerts, recitals, talks and lectures, and a two-day symposium on Friday and Saturday 03-04 October will take place on The University's Hyde Park campus as well as downtown at Roosevelt University's exquisite Louis Sullivan-designed Ganz Hall (American pianist Christopher Taylor performing Vingt regards sur l’Enfant Jésus) on Friday evening 10 October and at the Alliance Française (French flutist Alain Daboncourt performing Le merle noir with Chinese pianist Lei Weng as well as works by Debussy and André Jolivet -- preceded by a talk by UK Messiaen savant Peter Hill) on Thursday evening 09 October.

We'll have more on the Festival here soon and are also happy to report that WFMT will be broadcasting two programs live over 98.7WFMT in Chicago and on the Internet at wfmt.com:

Tonight's opening concert -- Thursday 02 October:

Dame Gillian Weir (left) on the newly restored E.F. Skinner organ at Rockefeller Memorial Chapel playing the Messe de la Pentecôte with movements by J.S. Bach and Couperin interpolated into the Messiaen score, as well as 20th century toccatas by Flor Peeters, Sergei Slonimsky, Georgy Mushel, and Marcel Lanquetuit -- at 7:30 p.m. CDT.

Tomorrow night's concert -- Friday 03 October:

Pianist and Messiaen student Pierre-Laurent Aimard (left, at right, with the man himself) makes his Midwest conducting debut with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra at Mandel Hall in a program that includes Oiseaux exotiques with Serbian pianist Tamara Stefanovich, Busser's orchestration of Debussy's Petite Suite, and Beethoven's G Major Fourth Concerto, Op. 58 -- also at 7:30 p.m. CDT.

WFMT will also be taping most of the other programs for subsequent broadcast including in December when Messiaen will be one of the station's artists-of-the-month.