Working the Night Shift

Known as a “cosmic nursery,” this is the very starting place for the stars that light up our night sky

Today I am ECSTATIC to share more about this piece I finished in January for the New Jersey Youth Symphony’s combined flute ensembles! The piece, Night Shifts, explores the life cycle of stars—from their birth in the cosmic nursery, their growth and expansion (sometimes resulting in explosions!), all the way to their eventual dimming out into the darkness.

WHO ASKED FOR THIS?

Commissioner Natasha Loomis

I met flutist Natasha Loomis through a mutual acquaintance—pianist Chris Opperman (you can hear my music on his latest album!)—when Chris asked me to write a piece for her and fellow flutist Tara Rozanski. I’m still working on that piece (for duo piccolos + electronics about tortillas!), but Natasha had also thought to ask me to write something for her flute choirs at the New Jersey Youth Symphony program. The combined flute choirs consist of a wide range of ages, and the prospect of having a flute choir work performed by no-less-than-40 flutists seemed to thrilling to pass up!

Natasha let me know that the season theme was “Better Together,” and that most of the flute program music she had picked out was related to night-type topics. She also let me know there were a few considerations for this flute piece to keep in mind—they had contrabass flutes and wanted to feature a stellar harpist they work with, they had 6 seniors that should be given solo moments throughout, and—if possible—wanted to have a wide range of ability levels on each part. With my own goals of wanting this piece to be done again in the future, I had (as usual) set out on a bit of an engineering project with the piece, but one I was elated to be undertaking!

STAR POWER

When thinking about their season theme of “Better Together” and how to combine it with nighttime imagery, it didn’t take long to think of stars—what could be any better together than the millions of little burning gas balls we’ve drawn constellations between and gazed up at in wonder? As I started my dive into the (rather astronomical) topic of stars, I sent out a survey to the students; I wanted to know about their own experiences / thoughts with stars, with togetherness, and also just find out what their relationship to music/their instruments were. The standard questions I always ask (what are you listening to these days? What do you love to play on your instrument? Do you like the music you’re playing with your ensemble right now? What do you want to learn about?) were scattered with questions like “have you ever been stargazing? Tell me about who you went with and what it was like,” or “who is someone who makes your life better?"

Aurora Australis and Milky Way (Ben Sugden)

While I was waiting on their responses, I started digging into what kinds of questions people have had about stars. They ranged from small questions about why stars appear to twinkle (Earth’s atmosphere makes it appear that way to us) to rather big questions about when our universe might end (lots of theories, but no real answers). I found out all sorts of fascinating things—like stars are in constant conflict with themselves (hard same), the light/temperature/color of a star are interrelated, the bigger the star the shorter its life, the North star (Polaris) was not—and will not always be—the same star.

When you read about stars, its hard not to get a bit philosophical / poetic. In one sense, it’s amazing to think that at least some of the same constellations have been seen by human eyes a few thousand years removed from today—and yet, the stars are not eternal. Stars die, sometimes fading into blackness and sometimes exploding into debris that becomes new stars. Space is alive—something a bit more special, in my opinion, than being immortal.

For context, this is 20 minutes from my childhood home and remains today one of my favorite spots to stargaze—you can see A LOT on a clear night.

If stars didn’t fade from the night sky, we wouldn’t be able to see them—you need the darkness to see the light. Speaking of darkness, what a difference in responses from the students who live out in the country about stars than those who live in the city center—some of whom haven’t seen stars yet! As someone who grew up in a relatively rural part of the country, the idea is unfathomable to me—and yet 99% of people live with light pollution today, making it more and more common.

But the idea of “adding to the dark” to let the next generation shine forth is something that humans also have to come to terms with—though on a much shorter timeline than stars. It’s easy to view such impermanence with melancholy, but more and more it fills me with wonder and appreciation—even the stars come to an end, and how fortunate we are to enjoy these ancient gas balls with the people we love; that, despite how fast and constant things change, our lives overlap with the stars, with our friends, with the places we love.

ARE WE GOING TO TALK ABOUT THE MUSIC?

Yes—in a future post! Night Shift will be premiering in May of this year, and I’m excited to share more about the music when we get a little closer to the premiere. For now, I’ll share a bit about the piece in general so we can dive right into music next time!

I. Cosmic Nursery - this movment is about baby stars—waddling around, shooting about, falling over, and being small and energetic. This movement is written only for flutes and piccolo, making it great as a one-off movement for a smaller flute choir. The optional harp part also features in this movement, adding quite a bit of sparkle and fun!

II. Dwarves and Giants - staring with an alto flute solo (of which there should be more in the world), the full range of flutes are used in this movement as they shoot off and scatter into all sorts of directions; growing and expanding into larger stars, pairing off, and eventually solo moments emerge as larger-and-larger intervals appear—mimicking the expanding of stars before they explode. A final flurry of clusters shoot off and percolate before trailing away into the lower flutes for the final movement.

III. Adding to the Dark - In this last movement (starting with a contrabass solo!), the solo flutes feature more heavily as the ensemble murmurs and pulses and overwhelms in waves of pitch bends and scalar runs. A final climactic ensemble moment gives way to special breathing effects in the ensemble as the piccolo and upper flue soloists climb higher and higher, finally gasping out in a final series of harmonies—eventually stripping away until all that remains is the quiet rushing of air.

MORE TO COME!

I’ll be back on the blog soon to talk more about this piece—and several others I’ve written so far this spring! In the meantime, I hope you get the chance to find a bit of clear skies yourself this weekend. Happy wandering!

Best night sky I’ve ever seen was at this campsite in the Del Norte Redwoods campground. You can bet I’m working on getting back there as soon as possible!