Photograph by Scott Ordway (Hong Kong, 2015)

On April 18 2015, I Flew Over the North Pole (2015)

Piano solo / 8 minutes

PREMIERE

Commissioned by ArtistYear and the Curtis Institute of Music

Premiere on April 3, 2016 at the Black Hills Chamber Music Society (Rapid City, SD)
Michelle Cann, piano

MEDIA

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NOTE

On April 18, 2015, I flew over the north pole while en route from Chicago to Hong Kong. The landscape there had an incredible, otherworldly quality. I saw a vast, unbroken expanse of ice, shaded a very pale blue by the cloudless sky. The earth was covered in a thin, translucent haze, beneath which I could see tiny, irregular cracks in the frozen landscape. Eventually, clouds gathered and hid this magical dream world from view. With this piece, I sought to create a bright music that shines in the cold, shifting as imperceptibly as the endless dawn of a polar spring.