The Music

Twelve composers share their inner reflections on outer space in
Cosmophony, Rachel Kiyo Iwaasa's solo piano project inspired by
the beauty and mystery of the cosmos.

Listen to Cosmophony

Praised by the Vancouver Sun as "brilliant" and "unforgettable," the program opens with Denis Gougeon's fiercely virtuosic invocation of the sun, Piano-Soleil. From there, audiences are taken on a journey past each of the planets in our solar system from Mercury to Neptune, with pieces commissioned from stellar composers Rodney Sharman, Marci Rabe, Alexander Pechenyuk, Jocelyn Morlock, Chris Kovarik, Jeffrey Ryan, Stefan Udell, and Jennifer Butler. Jordan Nobles' Fragments, a cluster of brilliant miniatures depicting the Asteroid Belt, nestles between Mars and Jupiter. Pluto, now demoted to dwarf planet status, is replaced by Gliese 581 c, a distant planet discovered in 2007 and speculated to be able to support Earth-like life. Composer Emily Doolittle's sparkling depiction expresses a tremulous dream of interstellar travel, shadowed by our fears of environmental collapse.

For the second half of the programme, George Crumb's monumental Makrokosmos II: 12 fantasy pieces after the Zodiac carries us past our galaxy and out into the stars. Written for amplified piano in 1973, this rarely performed twentieth century classic pioneered many revolutionary extended techniques for the piano. Often playing directly on the strings, the piece coaxes an astonishing variety of unearthly sounds from the instrument.

Cosmophony is accompanied by visuals created by the HR MacMillan Space Centre in Vancouver, together with spectacular new astrophotography collected for the 2009 UNESCO International Year of Astronomy. Lit only by the projections of stunning images of the solar system and beyond, Cosmophony creates a breathtaking multi-media spectacle.