The rocket lay on the launching field,

blowing out pink clouds of fire and oven heat.

The rocket stood in the cold winter morning,

making summer with every breath of its mighty exhausts.

The rocket made climates,

and summer lay for a brief moment upon the land. . . .

-Ray Bradbury, The Martian Chronicles (1946)


ABOUT THE COMPOSITION

"Rocket Summer" was inspired by the short story of the same name by American science fiction author, Ray Bradbury. Found in his collection of stories The Martian Chronicles, this vignette portrays a rocket launch carrying the first colonizing humans to Mars on a cold Midwestern day in January. As it readies to lift off, billowing clouds of exhaust and heat, the rocket creates some fantastic environmental repercussions for the frost-hardened citizens of a nearby Ohioan township. Growing up in cold Manitoba with cold Ohioan-like winters, I could only imagine the lush reprieve of a summer's day in the dead of winter as described by Bradbury. The story takes a minute to read, but the lasting effect of the vivid images and warming words left quite an impact on me.

The fanfare material is musically inspired by Gustav Holst's symphonic masterpiece, The Planets. Embedded through this short piece are snippets of his music written for "Mars" and "Jupiter". Careful attention was paid to percussion, with sparse/open scoring of keyboard instruments depicting a harsh and bare landscape, while drums, cymbals, and tam tam create the sense of warm waves in a "sea of hot air".

This piece is warmly dedicated to my friend and mentor, Dr. Wendy Zander McCallum - who continually encourages all of her students to keep looking up.