Da Camera Presents WARTIME STORIES, 4/21

Da Camera of Houston presents "Wartime Stories: Reich and Messiaen," a program featuring the St. Lawrence String Quartet, clarinetist Joshua Rubin and Sarah Rothenberg, pianist and Da Camera artistic and general director. The concert takes place on Saturday, April 21, 2018, at 7:30 PM at Zilkha Hall, Hobby Center for the Performing Arts.

This moving performance presents together two 20th-century masterworks that depict profoundly contrasting experiences of the WWII era. Steve Reich's groundbreaking Different Trains, presented with original synchronized video, interweaves live and pre-recorded string quartet with sounds of trains, whistles, sirens, recorded voices from the American past and fragmented memories of Holocaust survivors. Olivier Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time, composed in a German prisoner of war camp in 1940, is dramatized with lighting by renowned designer Jennifer Tipton.

"Wartime always brings uprootedness and absence from home," said Rothenberg. "Reich's Different Trains was inspired by the composer's childhood memories of transcontinental trips across America as he was shuttled between divorced parents and their homes in New York and LA; years later; he realized with horror that tragic train journeys of Jewish children like himself had taken place at the same time in Europe, and he composed this high-energy, powerfully kinetic work as a testament to both experiences. Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time is a world apart, a transcendent spiritual statement of mystical faith that looks beyond earthly time."

Established in 1989, the St. Lawrence String Quartet is known for the intensity of its performances, its breadth of repertoire and its commitment to concert experiences that are at once intellectually exciting and emotionally alive. Ruben is a founding clarinetist and program director of the International Contemporary Ensemble, and has been featured as a soloist with the Seattle Symphony and at the Mostly Mozart Festival at Lincoln Center.

Da Camera's 2017-18 chamber music series concludes with "Poetry and Music: Exile and Return" with Sarah Rothenberg and Adam Zagajewski on Monday, April 30, 2018, and Tuesday, May 1, 2018.

Tickets for "Wartime Stories: Reich and Messiaen" start at $37.50 and are available by contacting Da Camera, 1402 Sul Ross, at 713-524-5050 or online at www.dacamera.com. Tickets for students and senior citizens are always half price. $5 student rush tickets are available 30 minutes before the concert begins.

Da Camera's concerts feature small ensembles performing chamber music, jazz, early music and contemporary music. A vital institution in the world of chamber music, Da Camera is a source of innovative programming, notably Artistic and General Director Sarah Rothenberg's programs connecting chamber music with literature and the visual arts. Da Camera is nationally acclaimed for thought-provoking chamber music programming, as well as a jazz series with a unique balance between renowned performers and emerging artists.