Art of Elan performs ambitious Messiaen piece beneath the Anza-Borrego stars

Wild animals pop up in iconic classical music all the time.

There's Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's "Flight of the Bumblebee" and Sergei Prokofiev's "Peter and the Wolf."

But one you probably haven't heard of is Olivier Messiaen's ambitious 1974 work, "From the Canyons to the Stars," or "Des canyons aux étoiles."

It's rarely performed — and that's kind of the birds' fault.

"Part of the difficulty of this piece is that Messiaen transcribed, in other words, he wrote literally what birds were singing. And birds don't sing in normal musical time. They sing in their own time," said Steven Schick, professor of music at UC San Diego. "That means the rhythmic and the metrical aspects of this music conform to birdsong in many cases, which makes them more difficult to perform for we mere humans."

Schick will conduct Art of Elan's chamber orchestra in performing the piece under the stars in the Anza-Borrego Desert.

Courtesy of San Diego Symphony

"The level of difficulty of the solo parts, the piano, the two percussion parts and the solo horn also means that you really do have to have very, very special players to do this piece. And Kate (Hatmaker of Art of Elan) has located an absolutely first-class ensemble, including the soloists for this purpose.”

Schick said the French composer was inspired by the American West, particularly the canyons and wildlife of the desert.

Whimsical, complicated birdsong aside, the piece sprang from a transformative experience for the composer. Schick said Messiaen was a devout Catholic, and much of his music explored his religious beliefs and place in the universe. Messiaen's experience with the landscapes and inhabitants of the American desert was a profoundly spiritual one.

"You have bird song counterpoised with brass chorales that are just so moving, along with percussion sounds and sound effects — there's a moment where the trumpet player sounds like a coyote where there's a wind machine in the percussion section. So you have the sounds of nature, the sounds of the kind of spiritual aura of the place, and the sounds literally of the nonhuman denizens of the American West."

Gary Payne

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Art of Elan

The 12-movement piece features Schick conducting, pianist Conor Hanick, percussionists Fiona Digney and Andrew Watkins and Art of Elan's ensemble.

The outdoor concert is at La Casa del Zorro's Stargazing Theater in Borrego Springs. Schick said he believes it's only the second performance of the piece in an actual desert and welcomes the possibility of an unscripted, real-life solo from the local desert critters.