Marin Alsop Conducts World Premiere of David Cieri’s 84 BELLS in Barcelona

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The Philharmonia Orchestra will perform at the Palau de la Música Catalana in a Gaudí centennial tribute.

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A new large-scale work by acclaimed Brooklyn-based American composer David Cieri, 84 Bells, will receive its world premiere on June 10, 2026 at 8:00 p.m. at the Palau de la Música Catalana in Barcelona as part of a landmark concert commemorating the centennial of Antoni Gaudí's death.

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Conducted by Marin Alsop, the performance will bring together more than 200 musicians, including London's Philharmonia Orchestra and three choirs of the Fundació Orfeó Català-Palau de la Música Catalana—Cor de Cambra, Cor Jove de l'Orfeó Català, and Cor de Noies de l'Orfeó Català—in one of the centerpiece events of Barcelona's Year of Gaudí celebrations.

The June 10 program will also include the world premiere of Boston-based Barcelona-born composer Olivia Pérez-Collellmir's Seven Dreams of Gaudí , a symphonic-choral work created with librettist Anna Gual in tribute to the architect's life and legacy. The presentation of two newly commissioned works on a single program underscores the scale of the centennial tribute and the continuing power of Gaudí's vision to inspire new artistic creation. The evening also opens with Arvo Pärt's Da pacem Domine, the meditative prayer for peace composed in 2004 after the Madrid train bombings and written in memory of the victims, giving the program an added note of remembrance and reflection alongside its two world premieres.

Presented in the internationally celebrated modernist landmark Palau de la Música Catalana, the concert is expected to be a major cultural highlight honoring Gaudí's legacy through music, architecture, and civic celebration in 2026.

Additionally, on Thursday, June 11, at 8:30 p.m. , a second public concert, partnering with Formula One for the Year of Gaudi events, will feature 84 Bells, performed by the Philharmonia Orchestra, led by Alsop, at the F1 Fan Zone at Plaça de Catalunya. The program also includes Cor de Cambra singing a selection of celebratory songs, the fourth movement of Beethoven's Symphony No. 7, and Brian Tyler's Formula One Theme Song. You can find more information about this performance HERE .

Scored for orchestra, choir, and the bells Gaudí designed for the Sagrada Família, 84 Bells is a three-movement, 30-minute composition inspired by Gaudí's vision of architecture as a living, resonant force. Cieri's work relies heavily on an improvisational compositional process, paying homage to the unusual and organic nature of the Sagrada Familia's architecture, and drawing on the architect's unrealized plans for a monumental set of bells intended for the basilica. Gaudí envisioned the cathedral as a monumental musical instrument, but his plans for its 84 tubular bells were never realized before his death, as the renderings were destroyed during the Spanish Civil War. Experienced in composing for distilled orchestras and small ensembles, this performance marks a huge milestone for Cieri, as 84 Bells is the largest piece he has ever written.

The bells featured in the work are based on Gaudí's original sketches for 84 bells that are now being realized after 15 years of forensic reconstruction by architect and musician Galdric Santana, Gaudí Chair at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia, and curator of the Year of Gaudí celebrations. These bells are finally being cast and will sound for the first time this summer, offering a rare opportunity to hear these long-imagined instruments in a concert setting.

David Cieri notes: “For over a century, Gaudi has welcomed the world to walk into the living flame of his transcendent and magisterial architecture. How fortunate are we now that bell maker Galdric Santana is giving us an opportunity to hear, for the first time, Gaudi sing with us, through his own, now realized, beatific bells!”

Widely recognized for a body of work that moves fluidly between concert music, film, and collaborative projects, Cieri has composed scores for many of the most prominent documentary filmmakers of the last two decades, including Ken Burns, Lynn Novick, George Lucas, and Barak Goodman. His extensive collaborations with Burns include The Vietnam War, The Roosevelts: An Intimate History, Prohibition, Benjamin Franklin, Muhammad Ali, The American Revolution, and other major PBS projects. Burns has praised him as “a composer, capable of the most subtle turns of phrase, and sensitive to every nuance of image and sound.”

In addition to his screen work, Cieri has released more than twenty albums of original music and has written for unique instruments and settings, including Graves of Light, a tone poem for carillon bells, premiered at Yale's Harkness Tower. That affinity for resonant and site-specific sound worlds finds a natural continuation in 84 Bells.

The program originated and is presented by EAC Productions, an independent company founded in 2020 by Renée Chan and Patrick Mitchell, fostering creativity and community through art and music. EAC develops and promotes musical and artistic projects across the US and Spain. EAC is inspired by community, history, and the preservation of local culture, and supports live music productions, street art projects in Barcelona's El Born neighborhood, as well as a musical podcast exploring the history of New Orleans rhythm and blues music.

David Cieri is a prolific composer and musician who has written scores for some of the best-known documentarians and filmmakers. He has collaborated with award-winning documentarian Ken Burns on the newly released Thoreau, featuring George Clooney, Jeff Goldblum, and Meryl Streep. He previously worked with Burns on The American Revolution (2025), Hiding in Plain Sight (2022), Benjamin Franklin (2022), Muhammad Ali (2021), Hemingway (2021), The Vietnam War (with Yo-Yo Ma and Trent Reznor, 2017), The Roosevelts: An Intimate History (2014), Prohibition (with Wynton Marsalis, 2011) and National Parks (2008). He is currently composing for Burn's forthcoming Lyndon B Johnson documentary, With Crime and Punishment (with Lynn Novick) arriving on PBS in November 2026.

Additional film work includes The Mayo Clinic (2018, featuring guitarist Bill Frisell), Barak Goodman's Sundance-screened Oklahoma City (2017, Oscar long-listed), Emmy-nominated Cancer: The Emperor of All Maladies (2015), and Booker's Place: A Mississippi Story (2014, Oscar long-listed). In 2013, he worked with George Lucas on The Heart of the Matter.

Cieri has released twenty-one albums, including Dark Furniture (2018) and White Dust (2017) and collaborations with Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Yusef Komunyakaa. He created the World Carillon Project in 2020 and in 2016 composed Graves of Light, a tone poem for carillon bells recorded at Yale's Harkness Tower.

Born in Philadelphia, Cieri was introduced to music by his mother, a concert pianist and harpsichordist. He has performed at Carnegie Hall, Jazz at Lincoln Center, and other iconic musical venues. He has taught Music and Film Scoring at The City College of New York since 2010. Find more information about Cieri on his website HERE .

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_Originally reported by [BroadwayWorld](https://www.broadwayworld.com/bwwclassical/article/Composer-David-Cieris-84-BELLS-to-Have-World-Premiere-in-Barcelona-with-Marin-Alsop-20260511)._