MusicaNova Orchestra Presents The Mystical Muse

MusicaNova Orchestra (MNO) performs The Mystical Muse: Cycles of Inspiration and Hope on Sunday, January 6, 2019 at 2:00 PM in MNO's new home at the Musical Instrument Museum (MIM) in Phoenix. Tickets are available now online through the MIM box office (www.mim.org) for $33 and $38, plus fees. Any remaining tickets will be available at the door the day of the concert.

Devotion and faith, no matter source, have always driven the arts. MusicaNova presents three works that beautifully reflect the fusion of spiritual and secular inspiration experienced by their composers.

MusicaNova Composition Fellow Akshaya Avril Tucker's Songs for Soprano, Hindustani Singer, and Sinfonietta an Arizona premiere, expressly blends the spirits of Western and South Indian music.

MNO Conductor Warren Cohen says: "It is an absolutely groundbreaking and astonishing piece of music and I am pretty sure it will completely blow people away. It's the first piece I have ever heard to successfully meld the seemingly incompatible traditions of Indian and Western music and made them work."

English composer Edmund Rubbra, a devout Catholic and devotee of mystic and scientist Teilhard de Chardin, strove for music that sounded new and contemporary. His Viola Concerto in A Minor, performed by soloist Graham Cohen, is universally agreed to be a gorgeous work of quite remarkable originality.

César Franck was just as devout, but was inspired to compose secular music by Eros. His Symphony in D Minor is the first successful fusion, after many failures, of the distinctive French and German musical languages of the 19th Century. This neglected work was just as radical in its day as this fusion of Hindustani and Western symphonic music is today.