2 performances
3PM matinee + 7PM evening
Violin — name
Cello — name
Piano — name
$25 Restricted View (limited availability)
Featuring PULL
A site-responsive performance centered on Olivier Messiaen’s Quatuor pour la fin du temps, presented inside the Lakewood Cemetery Chapel.
This project connects a historic work to a contemporary sonic language, placing the quartet in conversation with immersive electronic sound, live performance, and the architecture of the Chapel itself.
The Piece
Messiaen composed and first performed Quartet for the End of Time while imprisoned in a German POW camp in 1941. The work has become one of the most powerful musical expressions of suspended time, spiritual endurance, and transcendence under extreme conditions.
Program
Our program places the quartet within a larger contemporary frame, extending its emotional and spiritual world through electronic sound and a performance by PULL.
The evening is structured as an experience rather than a standard recital — one that holds space for the work beyond the concert format, engaging its core ideas of harmonic stasis, eternity, and the suspension of time.
The program emphasizes lineage: the quartet as a spiritual ancestor to contemporary sound practices.
Around the dome of the Lakewood Cemetery Chapel are the words, “Until the day break and the shadows flee away.” These words, from the Song of Solomon, remind us that while living in suspended time, we must find a way to endure the darkness while waiting for dawn.
In Minneapolis in 2025/2026, we find ourselves also under occupation. With the accelerated unraveling of a world that advocates peace, we find ourselves as a species suspended in darkness.
Messiaen composed and first performed Quartet for the End of Time while incarcerated in a German POW camp in 1941. The work emerges from a lived experience of occupation, confinement, and suspended time.
Just as Messiaen finds moments of ethereal harmony throughout the quartet, the Chapel’s mosaic reminds us that even in a city — and a world — rattled by darkness, fear, and uncertainty, there remains the possibility of light.
Join us at the intersection of a historic work, a historic place, and this moment in time.