Now, to be perfectly clear, I don’t think it was a bad thing to have this concert – putting on risky performances like this is how new forms of great art and music are promoted, and I think it’s important to reinforce the appreciation a few others have expressed towards UMS for bringing Hamburg and Messiaen to Hill. These kinds of avant-garde concerts are important to have, and by all means they should continue. However, in this instance, the experiment painfully failed and didn’t achieve its artistic goals. This shouldn’t be a deterrent to other unusual performances; more of a lesson in marketing (reactions wouldn’t be so negative if this had been billed as a unique work instead of a Messiaen concert with a film). And, of course, in caution when modifying another’s works.

I think it’s perfectly fair to hold that “It doesn’t uphold the beauty so many of us see in Messiaen’s work” against the film. This film was supposed to be a counterpoint to the imagery composed around in Messiaen’s piece. It did not appear that way to the audience; not only was it ugly, it was incomprehensible and made no sense in the context of Messaien’s work, and *still* doesn’t make that much sense after the fact, having learnt what the film was trying to accomplish. Now, had the audience gone into this experience knowing full-well what this was supposed to be that would be okay, but the fact of the matter is that the vast majority of the audience last night came to hear a major work by Messiaen, not whatever it was that we got. Projects like this are allowed to shock their audiences to convey a message, but the fact of the matter is that to get away with it and be good art they have to succeed in *conveying* their message, and I, like so many others last night, had NO idea what we had just seen, and still, having perused everything readily available on the project, *still* don’t understand much of that film, and really don’t understand how it connects to Messiaen’s work, ‘counterpoint’ or not.

In short, we weren’t expecting that, and that would be okay *if it were good*, but it wasn’t. The film didn’t successfully juxtapose with Messaien’s music; whatever the film was trying for is too far removed from the composer’s work to successfully connect with it and simply detracted from the music that most of us came to hear.

If I had to guess I’d say that UMS hadn’t seen the film beforehand, and that they were expecting more or less what the audience was – that is, canyons and stars. Either way, it was quite offensive. I honestly had no idea what had just happened and what I was supposed to have taken from that when I left Hill tonight, but then I saw Tim Tikker’s comment above reposted on Facebook and matters became quite clear.