If you saw the Academy Award-winning film “Birdman,” you’ll likely recognize some of its music in the Chattanooga Symphony & Opera’s season finale tonight, April 30, at the Tivoli Theatre. Kayoko Dan will conduct the musicians in Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Symphony No. 2 and Ola Gjeilo’s “Sunrise Mass” for chorus and strings.
Rachmaninoff composed the four-movement Symphony No. 2 in 1906-07. More than a century later, a portion of its second movement was incorporated several times in the soundtrack for “Birdman,” most specifically when Michael Keaton’s character, Riggan, imagines himself flying over New York to those soaring strains.
If you go
* What: CSO Masterworks season finale concert. * When: 7:30 p.m. today, April 30 * Where: Tivoli Theatre, 709 Broad St. * Admission: $21-$81 ($15 with student ID) * Phone: 423-267-8583 * Website: www.ChattanoogaSymphony.org
The Rachmaninoff movement was among work by four classical composers included in the film; the others were compositions by Mahler, Tchaikovsky and Ravel.
Tonight’s CSO concert will also include the Chattanooga premiere or Gjeilo’s “Sunrise Mass,” performed by the 45-voice CSO Chorus. Darrin Hassevoort will direct the chorus. Hassevoort describes the mass as a work for two choirs and strings.
“Gjeilo is a relatively new composer on the scene. His works are being performed all over the world. Young people are really drawn to his music. This mass is a beautiful, seamless choral composition. The choir loves it. It has some very tight harmonies in it, so it requires a clean, choral approach. It has a lot of dissonance, then resolution,” says Hassevoort.
The mass’s use of two choirs opens the work with calls-and-responses in the kyrie and closes it in the sanctus.
“In the kyrie, the first choir comes in on a chord and, as they fade out, the second choir comes in on a different chord, so it creates a choral painting of a sunrise.
“By putting different chords on top of each other, he gives the picture of the different colors of the sun as it rises in the sky. It’s stunning,” Hassevoort says.
Contact Susan Pierce at spierce@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6284.