Elliot C. Williams
The National Philharmonic and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center are teaming up to present an astral symphony that promises to leave stargazers in awe of both space and classical music. The work, Cosmic Cycles, A Space Symphony will premiere with two performances this week — one in Maryland and another in Northern Virginia.
Led by conductor Piotr Gajewski, the regional orchestra will premiere D.C.-based composer Henry Dehlinger’s original composition Thursday at Capital One Hall, the Tysons concert hall that opened in 2021. Then, NatPhil — as the arts organization is calling itself these days — will bring the performance to Strathmore, its home venue, on Saturday.
Dehlinger crafted his symphony by drawing inspiration from images captured by NASA’s Hubble and James Webb Space telescopes, along with other images from NASA Goddard, which is located in Greenbelt. The result is a seven-movement symphonic suite, each focusing on a different aspect of the photographs, illustrations, and videos NASA sent to Dehlinger.
Each movement will be paired with films that will appear on an HD screen over the orchestra during the concert. The seven movements are: The Sun; Earth, Our Home; Earth as Art; The Moon; Planetary Fantasia; The Travelers; and Echoes of the Big Bang.
This was a dream project the composer, Dehlinger tells DCist/WAMU, adding that he’s a “space junkie.”
“It’s one of those things you never want to miss, having an opportunity to actually write music and allow yourself to be inspired by images of space,” Dehlinger says in an interview. “I couldn’t pass that up.”
Ahead of each show, NASA Goddard will be on site in the lobby to host space-related activities, including lectures from a real-life NASA astronaut, “ask a scientist” booths that will dive deeper into the movements from the symphony, and a touchable lunar rock. The lecture and Q&A begin at 6:45 p.m. at Capital One Hall and at 7 p.m. ahead of the Strathmore show.
Tickets for the shows start at $19, except for kids 17 and under, who can attend all NatPhil shows for free through the orchestra’s two-decade-old “All Kids. All Free. All the Time” initiative.
This is not the classical ensemble’s first collaboration with NASA or its first commission from Dehlinger. The two organizations most recently presented Holst’s The Planets at Strathmore and Capital One Hall in February 2022; and NatPhil premiered two of Dehlinger’s compositions in 2021: The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and Amore e’l cor gentil sono una cosa.
Dehlinger also composed “Return to the Moon, a Fanfare to Artemis” for NASA, a song that paid tribute to the rollout of the agency’s Artemis lunar program.
To create this latest work, Dehlinger sat through the films NASA sent — each about 10 minutes in length and depicting the cosmos from the telescopes’ various vantage points — multiple times before writing any music.
“I would just kind of allow myself to get lost in the imagery. I kind of treated it as a meditation,” he says. “I didn’t want to project anything onto the screen, I wanted it to speak to me.”
He eventually set to work in his notation program and began creating the movements. He describes the composition process in visual terms: “Oddly enough, I didn’t start with, say, melodies or harmonies. I would start with textures, because we’re working with a very large orchestra where you can really add all these amazing timbres and colors.”
NatPhil has produced some quirky promotional materials ahead of the concerts, like the below video featuring its president and CEO, Jim Kelly.
“Cosmic Cycles, A Space Symphony,” Thursday, May 11, 2023 at 7:30 pm at Capital One Hall; Saturday, May 13, 2023 at 8:00 pm at The Music Center at Strathmore. Tickets: $19-$99; Kids 17 and under attend free.
