ASTRONAUTICA: VOICES OF WOMEN IN SPACE

RENÉE FAVANT-SEE: FIRST FLIGHT

Astronautica: Voices of Women in Space, a Voices of Ascension commission of music, voice, and video features works by 9 women composers and has a libretto drawn from the words of women astronauts. This particular movement is quoted from the first woman astronaut to pilot a space shuttle.

In "First Flight", Eileen Collins wonders at the amazing speed of technological progress in the 20th Century, from the Wright Flyer to Atlas rockets. The music travels to fresh harmonic territory quickly through chromatic third relationships that jet tonal centers across tritones in a few leaps at a driving tempo. In the middle and final sections, counterpoint and elusive harmony allow for a multitude of possibilities and perspectives as the writer questions, what’s next?

– Renée Favant-See

ASTRONAUTICA: Voices of Women in Space
RENÉE FAVANT-SEE First Flight
Text: Eileen Collins

Performed by TRIO TRIUMPHATRIX
Lindsay Kesselman, soprano
Hai- Ting Chinn, mezzo-soprano
Kirsten Sollek, contralto

Excerpted from the World Premiere Online, January 2021
The singers in this performance are represented by the
American Guild of Musical Artists, AFL-CIO.