ABOUT “OBSERVATONS”

As we enter our 18th year, I’m excited to announce the release of “Observations”, our first album. The album is available now on CD at Intrada Records and will soon be available in digital download.

The album contains newly recorded music from our historic concert at Griffith Observatory on October 4, 2009. We repeated the concert in a free performance on October 6 at the Greek Theatre for some 4,000 middle and high school children.

Both events marked the launch of the Observatory’s Cosmic Conjunction, an annual program designed "to present original, substantive, artful, and unexpected perspectives on the relationship between astronomy and the arts."

The 2009 inaugural concert, sponsored by Griffith Observatory and Friends of Griffith Observatory, celebrated the International Year of the Astronomer, in recognition of the 400th anniversary of Galileo’s telescopic discoveries. Along with music by Monteverdi, Rameau, Duparc, Holst and Milhaud, the concert featured the premier of my own "Observations", narrated by Leonard Nimoy, commissioned specially for the Cosmic Conjunction Concert.

Shortly after the Cosmic Conjunction performances, we were extremely pleased to be able to take the orchestra into the Fox scoring stage to record the entire musical program so that we can share it with you. I’m especially delighted to have recorded the newly premiered work, "Observations", with Leonard Nimoy as narrator. We are grateful for his generosity in working with us.

Twenty minutes in length, "Observations" is based on my experiences, not only of Griffith Observatory, but also of a New York City childhood that included at least two school-trips a year to the Hayden Planetarium. Thus, the piece is not, strictly speaking, ‘programmatic’, but is rather a reflection of child-like wonder and awe. In composing the piece I sought to take the listener on a symphonic flight through time and space; to touch on the sense of the infinite that exists within every human mind-from the primitive mysticism of the Ancients, to Galileo as he makes his first shocking discoveries of the true nature of the moon and Solar System, and finally a glimpse at the modern wonders made possible by the achievement of Escape Velocity.

The album features both a narrated and an instrumental version of “Observations.” By clicking the link below you can hear a sample of the narrated version. You can hear more and buy the CD by following this link to the Intrada Records website.

By purchasing the album you support Symphony In The Glen concerts in Griffith Park. Thank you.