Music of the Stars

This 13-minute three-movement work for mixed choir and piano or strings with percusion (vibraphone, glockenspiel, and suspended cymbal) offers an enlightening commentary on the power of music to console and uplift in challenging times. An excerpt from a Ukrainian folk song is woven into the first movement's gentle setting of Kenyan poet Brian Odongo's atmospheric depiction of the music of the ancient stars that watch over humanity below in Music of the Stars. The up-tempo second movement, The Hardest Thing, presents American astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson's absorbing explanation of light and how we perceive it. The affirmatory final movement The Gift to Sing sets American writer James Weldon Johnson's well-known text, drawing the piece to a close with the emphatic, joyful statement: "And I can sing."