I don’t have the convenient artist’s dodge—“the one I’m working on”—when asked the annoying question “who is your favorite composer,” because I don’t play an instrument. The tears splashed down on my trembling eight-year-old hands resting uneasily on the piano keys. End of piano lessons.

That mercy hardly meant I didn’t love listening to piano music. My unhesitating reply to the question, since 1967, usually greeted by a blank stare, is Olivier Messiaen, one of the greatest composers of piano music—and so much more. Jacaranda set out in 2007 to change such questioning befuddlement into the look of recognition and curiosity. With important U.S. and LA premieres, Jacaranda’s OM Century project celebrated Messiaen’s 100th birthday with 16 concerts presenting his artistic models, his pals and musical contemporaries, and his many students. For me Messiaen is endlessly fascinating, the quintessential Sagittarian. But the Zodiac’s “Club of Centaurs” is a fiery, feisty, and formidable group of composers who give astrologers food-for-thought on a banquet scale.

I hope you enjoy this journey with the Archers.