August 04, 2008

NMAI presents NASA concert

'Planets' gather at NMAIIn conjunction with the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, the National Museum of the American Indian and the oddly named Space Philharmonic, NASA presented a concert performance of "The Planets" as part of its Fifty Years and Beyond celebrations.

The museum's Tim Johnson, speaking informally just before the exhilarating massed sounds of an orchestra in full-attention tune-up mode called an audience of hundreds to order, said NMAI jumped at the chance to continue building synergies with NASA by hosting the concert. The hard-science space exploration agency has begun to heed and spotlight indigenous knowledge of the Earth and its climate.

But if the concert evening featured numerous references to Native cosmology and the natural world of all its relations, another collaboration lay closer to hand. The performance of one of the best-known compositions in the classical repertory was a perfect table-setter for one of the most intriguing entries on Indian country's Washington calendar--"Classical Native," Nov. 6-11 at NMAI, featuring new original compositions and virtuoso turns on classical music standards.
Comment:  The "Mars" portion of "The Planets" is worth listening to. The others, not so much.

2 comments:

dmarks said...

I'd like to hear this if possible.

"Jupiter" is great too. The rest really aren't bad at all.

writerfella said...

Writerfella here --
writerfella himself used the 'Mars Theme' from Gustav Holst's THE PLANETS as the theme behind his script that gained him entry into the University of Miami (FL) screenwriting program in 1979. An alien ship hovers above Earth while the almost-immortal snakelike occupants briefly discuss their mission: gather one example of intelligent top-predator life that they encounter in this galactic sector. Life is proving to be everywhere, and so their assignment is worthy. They scan Earth, select one single intelligence there, and then whisk away at light-speed to another star system. On earth, on a quiet coast of Florida, a child approaches her mother and says that dad didn't answer her questions inside. The mother says, 'Don't bother your dad right now. He has a lot to think about, and his mind must be a million miles away..."
All Best
Russ Bates
'writerfella'