Icarus and Daedalus Fantasy

Icarus and Daedalus was commissioned by the United States Air Force Band at Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio. The one-movement composition illustrates the story of the mythological Greek inventor Daedalus and his son Icarus, who were imprisoned on the island of Crete and ordered by King Minos to construct a labyrinth. In order to escape, Daedalus fashions two pairs of wings out of seagull feathers and wax. But Icarus flies too close to the sun, which melts his wings, and he plunges headlong to his death in the raging Icarian sea.