Duration: 10:00
Scoring: flute, alto saxophone, and piano
Ephemeral Travelers is a commission from Pamela Youngblood, Roy Allen, and Ted Powell of the Texas Woman’s University Trio.
This piece was inspired by the imagery of an interstellar comet. The path of a comet with a hyperbolic trajectory, or orbit, is one that is moving around a central body (i.e. our sun) with enough speed to escape that objects gravitational pull. Dust and gas trails are formed when pressure from sunlight and magnetic forces from solar wind essentially push the dust and gases out. I reached out to Dr. Michael Cushing of Toledo University for the information on comets in general and interstellar comets specifically. My thanks to him for his time and help with the scientific ideas that sparked this piece. Overall the work is an image of this comet entering our galaxy, our anticipation of seeing it for a brief moment of time, and then watching it depart.
Read more on this piece by clicking HERE.