The Louis Moreau Institute for New Music Performance is celebrating its 11th anniversary season and over 10 years of presenting contemporary classical music to audiences in New Orleans. This year’s festival will feature Institute Artists from past seasons including violinist Rhiannon Banerdt, clarinetist Nicholas Davies, and cellist Zhihao Wu. They will be joined by violinist Emelyn Bashour as well as the Institute’s Assistant Artistic Director, acclaimed pianist Wesley Ducote.

The centerpiece of the festival’s second and final concert will be Olivier Messiaen’s Quatuor pour la fin du temps (Quartet for the End of Time), composed in 1941 during Messiaen’s internment in a prisoner-of-war camp in Görlitz, Silesia (modern-day Poland). Complementing Messiaen’s work will be Past Light, a companion piece composed by the Institute’s Artistic Director, Morris Rosenzweig that serves as both a homage to and a dialogue with the French composer’s legacy.

March 31st, 2025

Dixon Recital Hall
Tulane University
Newcomb Circle
New Orleans, LA 70118

Johnson, Johnson,and Cole – Oh Didn’t He Ramble
Morris Rosenzweig – Past Light
Olivier Messiaen – Quatuor pour la fin du temps

The year's Institute Artists are:
Rhiannon Banerdt, violin
Emelyn Bashour, violin
Nicholas Davies, clarinet
Zhihao Wu, cello

Accompanied on piano by Assistant Artistic Director, Wesley Ducote

Light and the End of Time

March 31st, 2025

Dixon Recital Hall
Tulane University
Newcomb Circle
New Orleans, LA 70118

Morris Rosenzweig – Past Light
1. One Thread Among It
2. All Together
3. Open 

Emelyn Bashour, violin
Nicholas Davies, clarinet
Zhihao Wu, cello
Wesley Ducote, piano

Past Light - Morris Rosenzweig

March 31st, 2025

Dixon Recital Hall
Tulane University
Newcomb Circle
New Orleans, LA 70118

Johnson, Johnson,and Cole – Didn’t He Ramble

Emelyn Bashour, violin
Nicholas Davies, clarinet
Zhihao Wu, cello
Wesley Ducote, piano

Oh Didn’t He Ramble - Johnson, Johnson, & Cole (arr. Wesley Ducote)

March 31st, 2025

Dixon Recital Hall
Tulane University
Newcomb Circle
New Orleans, LA 70118

Olivier Messiaen – Quatuor pour la fin du temps
I. Liturgie de cristal
II. Vocalise, pour l'Ange qui annonce la fin du temps
III. Abîme des oiseaux
IV. Intermède
V. Louange à l'Éternité de Jésus
VI. Danse de la fureur, pour les sept trompettes
VII.  Fouillis d'arcs-en-ciel, pour l'Ange qui annonce la fin du temps
VIII. Louange à l'Immortalité de Jésus

Emelyn Bashour, violin
Nicholas Davies, clarinet
Zhihao Wu, cello
Wesley Ducote, piano

Quator pour la fin du Temps - Olivier Messiaen

The Louis Moreau Institute is a non-profit arts organization formed, in part, to honor Louis Moreau Gottschalk, the 19th-century New Orleans composer who bridged cultural and musical worlds. For some 200 years, New Orleans has been widely identified as a vital center of musical life.  It has invented, encouraged, and sustained a number of genres that have influenced musical thinking and practice worldwide. To date, forward-leaning New Music has not enjoyed the prominence or identity of the opera, rags, multicultural concert music, jazz, blues, and funk conventionally associated with the city's rich cultural heritage.  The Louis Moreau Institute is poised to do so, adding to the vitality and diversity of the city's musical life, do so in a unique way, and give the future of music a "desitively rite" place to grow and prosper. The Louis Moreau Institute also supports emerging, young performing artists from around the country, giving them the opportunity to perform challenging repertoire in non-traditional venues and to provide them with media from these performances to boost their early career development.