Alice Sara Ott & Friends: Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time

Pianist Alice Sara Ott is joined by three of her closest musical friends – Sebastian Manz (clarinet), Thomas Reif (violin) and Sebastian Klinger (cello) – in one of the most evocative works in the chamber music repertoire, Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time. This film is a synesthetic immersion created by musician and cinematographer Andrew Staples, who seeks to allow the viewer to experience Messiaen's hallucinations during the music's composition in a World War II prisoner-of-war camp. Staples uses iridescence, light projection, and layered contemporary contexts to breathe life into this emotional reading, bridging the past to our present - which seems nearer than we hoped to the darknesses of this piece's creation.