Brooklyn-based American composer David Cieri will see the world premiere of his new large-scale work “84 Bells” on June 10, 2026 at the Palau de la Música Catalana in Barcelona, as part of the city’s Year of Gaudí celebrations marking the centennial of the architect’s death.

Scored for orchestra, choir, and the bells Gaudí himself designed for the Sagrada Família, “84 Bells” is a three-movement, 30-minute work inspired by the architect’s unrealized vision of the cathedral as a monumental musical instrument. Gaudí’s plans for 84 tubular bells were destroyed during the Spanish Civil War; they are now being realized for the first time following 15 years of forensic reconstruction by architect and musician Galdric Santana, Gaudí Chair at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia. The work represents the largest composition of Cieri’s career, whose credits include documentary scores for Ken Burns, Lynn Novick, George Lucas, and Barak Goodman.

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

Marin Alsop conducts the Philharmonia Orchestra alongside soprano Núria Rial and more than 200 musicians drawn from three choirs of the Fundació Orfeó Català-Palau de la Música Catalana: the Cor de Cambra del Palau de la Música Catalana, the Cor Jove de l’Orfeó Català, and the Cor de Noies de l’Orfeó Català. The June 10 program opens with Arvo Pärt’s “Da pacem Domine” and also includes the world premiere of “Seven Dreams of Gaudí,” a symphonic-choral work by Boston-based, Barcelona-born composer Olivia Pérez-Collellmir, written with librettist Anna Gual.

A free public concert featuring “84 Bells” will follow on June 11 at 8:30 p.m. at the F1 Fan Zone at Plaça de Catalunya, with the same forces joined by a movement from Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7 and Brian Tyler’s Formula One Theme Song. Both performances are presented by EAC Productions.