Colour… For the End of Time
The Gryphon Trio
Imagine if two or more of your senses were somehow linked together - if you could see colours when you hear sounds.
A brilliant marriage of music and image devised to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the birth of composer and synesthete Olivier Messiaen, Colour...for the End of Time also explores the remarkable effects of this astonishing and rare neurological condition.
Drawing on Messiaen's own accounts of how musical chords would summon specific colours to his mind's eye, the Juno Award-winning Gryphon Trio - violinist Annalee Patipatanakoon, cellist Roman Borys and pianist Jamie Parker, joined for the occasion by clarinetist James Campbell - have created a striking visual accompaniment to the piece he composed in 1941 while interned in a German prisoner-of-war camp: Quartet for the End of Time. As the musicians play, abstract colours and textures, designed by artist Bernard White, are projected in a visual display that heightens and transforms the experience of listening to one of the most beautiful, moving and transcendently spiritual chamber works of the 20th century.
Colour...for the End of Time will be preceded by a 20-minute talk on scientific findings about synesthesia and its link to music and the visual arts.
Synesthesia
Synesthetes inhabit a world slightly, but magically, different from that of most people -a world of extra colours, shapes, and sensations. For synaesthetes, the experience of a single sense is accompanied by sensations in other sensory modalities.
This performance is made possible with the generous support of Rob and Cheryl McEwen, in name of the McEwen Center for Regenerative Medicine, in recognition of the vital connection between science the arts.
$25.00 - $35.00
