#4012: Music Inspired by NASA
It’s an hour of music inspired by NASA and the space missions of the 1960’s and 1970s. Hear music from Meredith Monk and jazz pianist Kit Downes, Penguin Café, from Kronos Quartet & Terry Riley, and music from the bands Public Service Broadcasting, and Quindar.
Listen to music by the mostly electronic duo Quindar, Mikael Jorgensen (of Wilco) and art historian James Merle Thomas, who often make use of archival audio and film often in their work. Their name even comes from the beep tone that you hear every couple of seconds in audio communications between astronauts and Mission Control. There’s music by Mercury Prize nominated pianist Kit Downes, from his record, Light From Old Stars,” The “conceptual framework” comes from the intriguing notion that the stars we see are often dead, and that stargazing is ‘a form of time travel without moving’.
Then, hear a work from the Penguin Café written for the International Space Orchestra and NASA Ames in 2012, which was then beamed into space as part of NASA’s Kepler project. There's much music from the London electronic duo known as Public Service Broadcasting as well. Hear “The Other Side,” which uses footage of when the astronauts of the Apollo 8 mission were out of communication with NASA, while on the dark side of the moon.
Listen to music by Terry Riley, who used found sound from the audio archives at the jet propulsion laboratory in Iowa and incorporated that material into a piece for the Kronos Quartet, called “Sun Rings.” Plus, music by Meredith Monk, her work, "Earth Seen From Above," and more.
PROGRAM #4012, inspired by NASA (First Aired: 8/11/2017)
ARTIST: Public Service Broadcasting
WORK: The Other Side, excerpt [1:00]
RECORDING: The Race for Space
SOURCE: Test Card Recordings
INFO: musicglue.com
ARTIST: Quindar
WORK: Arabella Anita [4:49]
RECORDING: Hip Mobility
SOURCE: Butterscotch Records BSR016
INFO: butterscotchrecords.net
ARTIST: Kit Downes
WORK: Jan Johansson [6:38]
RECORDING: Light From Old Stars
SOURCE: Basho SRCD 42-2
INFO: bashorecords.com | kitdownes.com
ARTIST: Penguin Café
WORK: 1420 [5:55]
RECORDING: The Red Book
SOURCE/INFO: penguincafe.com
ARTIST: Quindar
WORK: Twin Pole Sunshade for Rusty Schweickarty [5:41]
RECORDING: Hip Mobility
SOURCE: Butterscotch Records BSR016
INFO: butterscotchrecords.net
ARTIST: Public Service Broadcasting
WORK: Tomorrow [4:00], The Other Side [6:21]
RECORDING: The Race for Space
SOURCE: Test Card Recordings
INFO: musicglue.com
ARTIST: Meredith Monk
WORK: Earth Seen From Above [7:34]
RECORDING: Atlas
SOURCE: ECM #1491/92
INFO: ecmrecords.com
ARTIST: Kronos Quartet
WORK: Terry Riley: Sun Rings- One Earth One People One Love, excerpt [3:26]
RECORDING: Live on Soundcheck, 3/9/10
SOURCE: This performance not commercially available.
INFO: The work appears on Kronos Quartet's Nonesuch recording, Sunrise of the Planetary Dream Collector: Music of Terry Riley
