Skyward Ascension

The final frontier lies above us like a vast blanket that extends billions of lightyears beyond the sights of our most powerful telescopes. The cold and expansive void of space carries a silent ambience that echoes loneliness and solidarity, but is a part of something much greater than ourselves.

In Skyward Ascension, music paints the picture of a towering rocket atop a launch pad, its tiny capsule completely isolated from the outside world. Within mere moments, a million pounds of thrust will lift the rocket from the chains of gravity, searing the ground with immeasurable heat and power. The pale blue dot of Earth will be left behind, to venture to a place where few have ever dared to go.

The lone voice of the clarinet speaks to the human soul, stark against the backdrop of cold and desolate space, while repeated punctuations in strings and percussion build the intensity and dread of the unpredictable. The light waltz in the middle of the piece represents the feeling of weightlessness and joy of floating in microgravity.

Venturing to space and returning safely home is a job only for the bravest of the brave. Destiny lies above us, and the clock is ticking. It is our calling to ascend toward the sky; toward the stars.

“Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves… the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.”

-Carl Sagan