• Eric Whitacre
• Roger Zare
• Gustav Holst
• Peter Meechan
• Baljinder Sekhon
• Courtney Bryan
• Jessie Montgomery
• Joseph Haydn
• Fiorella Terenzi
• Kenyon Wilson
• John Williams
• Neal Peres da Costa
• Jonathan McNair

Musicians and Composers have been inspired by Outer Space and the Stars as long as humans have created music. Thus, musicians have addressed this topic of Outer Space in many different ways, from the technical to the metaphorical. 

This guide identifies several examples of composers whose music investigates or celebrates Outer Space in various forms. 

Eric Whitacre

Grammy Award-winning composer and conductor, Eric Whitacre, is among today’s most popular musicians. A graduate of The Juilliard School, his works are performed worldwide, and his ground-breaking Virtual Choirs have united well over 100,000 singers from more than 145 countries. Among his recent accolades and awards, Eric received the Richard D. Colburn Award from the Colburn School and an Honorary Doctor of Arts from Chapman University (CA). His long-term relationship with Decca Classics has produced several no.1 albums which have enduring success.

From: https://ericwhitacre.com/ used with permission.

To learn more about Eric Whitacre, visit his site.

Roger Zare

Roger Zare has been praised for his “enviable grasp of orchestration” (New York Times) and for writing music with “formal clarity and an alluringly mercurial surface.” He was born in Sarasota, FL, and has written for a wide variety of ensembles, from solo instruments to full orchestra. Often inspired by science, mathematics, literature, and mythology, his colorfully descriptive and energetic works have been performed on six continents by such ensembles as the American Composers Orchestra, the Minnesota Orchestra, the Sarasota Orchestra, the Australian-based Trio Anima Mundi, the Donald Sinta Quartet, and the New York Youth Symphony. An award winning composer, Zare has received the ASCAP Nissim Prize, three BMI Student Composer Awards, an ASCAP Morton Gould award, a New York Youth Symphony First Music Commission, the 2008 American Composers Orchestra Underwood Commission, a 2010 Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Copland House Residency Award, Grand Prize in the inaugural China-US Emerging Composers Competition, and many other honors. An active pianist, Zare performed his chamber work, Geometries, with Cho-Liang Lin, Jian Wang, and Burt Hara at the 2014 Hong Kong International Chamber Music Festival. He has been the 2023 FRA guest composer at Fermilab and composer-in-residence with the Chesapeake Chamber Music Festival, the Salt Bay Chamber Music Festival, the Chamber Music Festival of Lexington and the SONAR new music ensemble. Zare's collections of concert etudes for solo clarinet and bass clarinet are paired with written masterclasses by clarinetist Andy Hudson in Elements of Contemporary Clarinet Technique and SPACE BASS, both published by Conway Publications and distributed around the world.

From: https://rogerzare.com/bio.htm used with permission

To learn more about Roger Zare, visit his site.

Gustav Holst

Holst was an English composer and music teacher noted for the excellence of his orchestration. His music combines an international flavor based on the styles of Maurice Ravel, Igor Stravinsky, and others with a continuation of English Romanticism.

The Planets is an orchestral suite consisting of seven short tone poems by English composer Gustav Holst. Its first public performance took place in 1920, and it was an instant success. Of the various movements, “Mars” and “Jupiter” are the most frequently heard. Holst wrote his collection of planetary portraits from 1914 to 1916, while he was director of music at St. Paul’s Girls’ School. His inspiration, he readily offered, came from astrology and horoscopes rather than astronomy and mythology.

From: https://academic-eb-com.proxy.lib.utc.edu/levels/collegiate/article/Gustav-Holst/40827 used with permission.

To learn more about Gustav Holst, visit his site.

Peter Meechan

The music of Canadian-British composer Peter Meechan (b. 1980, Nuneaton, UK) is extensively performed throughout the world. His music has been commissioned, recorded, broadcast and performed by some of the world’s leading symphony orchestras, wind ensembles, brass bands, conductors and soloists, including: “The President’s Own” United States Marine Band, The United States Air Force Band, The United States Army Band “Pershing’s Own”, Dallas Symphony Orchestra, BBC Concert Orchestra, Edmonton Symphony Orchestra, Chicago Symphony Orchestra brass, The Dallas Winds, Black Dyke Brass Band, The Band of the Coldstream Guards, RNCM Wind Orchestra, Bramwell Tovey, Jens Lindemann, Ryan Anthony, David Childs, Steven Mead, Patrick Sheridan, Les Neish, Peter Moore, Linda Merrick, and many more.

From: https://www.tiaranicolephotography.com/ & https://meechanmusic.com/biography/ used with permission.

To learn more about Peter Meechan, visit his site.

Baljinder Sekhon

The music of Baljinder Sekhon has been presented in over 600 concerts in twenty-six countries. From works for large ensemble to solo works to electronic music, Sekhon’s music demonstrates a wide range of genres and styles. His works have been performed in venues such as Carnegie Hall, Kennedy Center, Seoul Arts Center (Korea), and National Recital Hall (Taiwan). Seventeen commercial recordings of his work have been released, with his most recognized output being his contributions to the percussion and saxophone genres. Alchemy, the second full album of Sekhon’s work, features compositions for saxophone and was released on Innova Recordings October 22, 2021, with the first portrait album entitled Places & Times featuring works for percussion.

From: https://sekhonmusic.com/about-baljinder/ used with permission.

To learn more about Baljinder Sekhon, visit his site.

Courtney Bryan

Courtney Bryan, a native of New Orleans, Louisiana, is “a pianist and composer of panoramic interests” (New York Times). She is a 2023 MacArthur Fellow, and currently serves as composer-in-residence with Opera Philadelphia. Recent accolades include the Herb Alpert Award in the Arts (2018), Samuel Barber Rome Prize in Music Composition (2019–2020), United States Artists Fellowship (2020), and the Civitella Ranieri Foundation Fellowship (2020–2021). She is the Albert and Linda Mintz Professor of Music at Newcomb College in the School of Liberal Arts at Tulane University.

From: https://www.courtneybryan.com/ used with permission.

To learn more about Courtney Bryan, visit her site. 

Jessie Montgomery

Jessie Montgomery is a GRAMMY® Award-winning composer, violinist, and educator whose work interweaves classical music with elements of vernacular music, improvisation, poetry, and social consciousness, making her an acute interpreter of 21st-century American sound and experience. Her profound works have been described as “turbulent, wildly colorful, and exploding with life,” (The Washington Post) and are performed regularly by leading orchestras, ensembles, and soloists around the world. In June 2024, she concluded a three-year appointment as the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s Mead Composer-in-Residence.

A founding member of PUBLIQuartet and former member of the Catalyst Quartet, Montgomery is a frequent and highly engaged collaborator with performing musicians, composers, choreographers, playwrights, poets, and visual artists alike. At the heart of Montgomery’s work is a deep sense of community enrichment and a desire to create opportunities for young artists and underrepresented composers to broaden audience experiences in classical music spaces.

Montgomery has been recognized with many prestigious awards and fellowships, including the Civitella Ranieri Fellowship, the Sphinx Medal of Excellence and Sphinx Virtuosi Composer-in-Residence, the Leonard Bernstein Award from the ASCAP Foundation, and Musical America’s 2023 Composer of the Year. She serves on the Composition and Music Technology faculty at Northwestern University’s Bienen School of Music.

From: https://www.jessiemontgomery.com/about/#short-bio-201-words & Jiyang Chen Photography, used with permission.

To learn more about Jessie Montgomery, visit her site.

Joseph Haydn

By far the most influential—and in that sense the most important—composer of symphonies in the mid-to-late eighteenth century was (Franz) Joseph Haydn (1732–1809), who in two momentous ways established the genre for posterity. First, by creating an unusually large and impressive body of works in the genre that became the object of widespread emulation, Haydn did more by his example than any other composer to standardize the “classical” symphony, as it has come to be called. And second, by once and for all taking the genre out of the aristocratic salon and into the public sphere, Haydn considerably enlarged both its dimensions and its cultural significance, and laid the foundation for the modern concert repertory, in which several of his symphonies are still staples.

From: https://www-oxfordwesternmusic-com.proxy.lib.utc.edu/view/Volume2/actrade-9780195384826-div1-10005.xml?rskey=mDDIfR&result=1 used with permission.

To learn more about Joseph Haydn, visit the Oxford History of Western Music.

Fiorella Terenzi

Internationally renowned astrophysicist, author and recording artist Dr. Fiorella Terenzi has a doctorate in physics from the University of Milan. In research at the Computer Audio Research Laboratory, University of California, San Diego, she pioneered techniques to convert radio waves from distant galaxies into sound - released by Island Records on her acclaimed CD "Music from the Galaxies." 

From: https://case.fiu.edu/about/directory/profiles/terenzi-fiorella.html, used with permission

To learn more about Fiorella Terenzi, visit the Florida International University page.

Kenyon Wilson

In addition to low brass instruction at UTC, Kenyon Wilson is principal tubist with the Tuscaloosa Symphony Orchestra in Alabama and the Augusta Symphony Orchestra in Georgia. His past teaching positions include full time appointments at Central Michigan University, Valdosta State University in Georgia, and the Baku Music Academy in Azerbaijan where he served as a Lecturing Fulbright Scholar. He has performed recitals in the United States, Canada, Japan, Germany, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Armenia. Dr. Wilson recently collaborated on the Tuba Music Guide: The New Tuba Source Book, which will be published by Indiana University Press in 2007. He has authored five articles for the International Tuba/Euphonium Association Journal and published eight works for tuba/euphonium ensemble. His performance of Sy Brandon's American Fantasy won first prize in the 2004 Co-Op Press Recording Competition and was released in 2005 on Fantasies and Realities, Emeritus Records.

From: https://www.utc.edu/directory/jsm668-music-kenyon-wilson/jsm668#Biography, used with permission.

To learn more about Kenyon Wilson, visit his site.

John Williams

Williams is fundamentally a romantic traditionalist, but often blends traditional musical syntax and expression with avant-garde techniques and elements of popular music. More than any of his contemporaries he has developed the ability to express the dramatic essence of a film in memorable musical ideas; likewise, he is able to shape each score to build climaxes that mirror a particular narrative structure.

From: https://www-oxfordreference-com.proxy.lib.utc.edu/display/10.1093/acref/9780195314281.001.0001/acref-9780195314281-e-9007?rskey=Mw5leQ&result=13, used with permission.

Photo by: Michael Kovac/Getty Images

To learn more about John Williams, see the full Grove Dictionary of American Music article.

Neal Peres da Costa

Neal Peres da Costa is Artistic Advisor to the Australian Romantic & Classical Orchestra and works in close association with the orchestra’s co-artistic directors, Rachael Beesley and Nicole van Bruggen. Neal featured as fortepiano soloist in Mozart Piano Concerto K.488 in 2021 and 2022, and is a regular guest speaker at the Young Mannheim Symphonists education programs. Read more about his collaboration with the Australian Romantic & Classical Orchestra at The K.488 Project.

From: https://www.arco.org.au/neal-peres-da-costa, used with permission

To learn more about Neal Peres da Costa, visit the Australian Romantic & Classical Orchestra site.

Jonathan McNair

Jonathan B. McNair’s music has been performed across the U.S.A., and in Canada, Brazil, Puerto Rico, Austria, England, Japan, and Germany. Recordings are available on the North/South Consonance, Capstone (PARMA), ACA Digital, AUR labels, and Ablaze labels. Selected works are published by Potenza Music, and Keepe Publishing House, and McNairMusic. He was named Tennessee Composer of the Year for 2008 by the Tennessee Music Teachers Association. 

From: https://www.utc.edu/directory/brr764-music-jonathan-mcnair/brr764#:~:text=He%20was%20named%20Tennessee%20Composer,Brazos%20Valley%20Symphony%20Orchestra%2C%20St., used with permission

To learn more about Jonathan McNair, visit the UTC faculty page.