The Playground Ensemble Presents

The Space Program

A 360° multi-media concert experience for domes

Space and astronomy have fascinated humans for centuries, but one of the distinguishing characteristics of the 20th Century was humanity’s journey into that great unknown made possible by NASA’s Space Program and others like it across the globe. Our desire to know more about the universe and our place within it touches all aspects of our culture, from music and movies to pop-culture and beyond.

The Playground’s Space Program is a fully immersive live concert that explores how space and space exploration have influenced our world.

The concert was designed specifically to be performed in domes and features the innovative work of uniquely trained video artists, audio engineers, and composers. The concert utilizes each dome’s one-of-a-kind array sound system to create a multi-sensorial live music experience featuring audio spatialization/localization, sounds taken from satellites orbiting the Earth, and actual astronomical data from NASA.

The Playground premiered this concert in 2020 and has since presented it multiple times to SOLD-OUT audiences at Gates Planetarium at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science and OtterBox Dome at the Fort Collins Museum of Discovery.

K-12/Family Outreach & Community Engagement

The Playground Ensemble values domes as community maker spaces and wants to get youth into these innovative spaces and inspire them to create. As part of The Space Program, we are interested in exploring outreach opportunities that resonate with your community and engage local youth and underserved populations.

We have an expansive array of in-house music creation offerings focused on giving young people the tools and confidence they need to create their own music.

Outreach activities could include:

• Offering a pared-down version of The Space Program, created with youth/families in mind, as a ticketed public experience or a field trip opportunity; or

• Offering middle and high school CTE and STEM classes in your space so students can get a behind-the-scenes look at the A/V equipment we utilize and learn about domes.

Alternatively, activities could look more like our usual in-house educational offerings in your community, including:

• Sending The Playground into a school (or multiple) in your area to present one of our K-12 in-school workshops, such as Soundpainting or Color, Shape, Sound. More about these programs here.

The opportunities for collaborative outreach activities with The Playground are endless, and we would love to hear from you about your needs, gaps we can fill, and ideas you might have!

University Partnerships

As part of our year-round programs, The Playground frequently partners with universities to support the education of music and non-music students. These offerings include masterclasses with Playground musicians/composers and composition students, workshops focused on electronic media, chamber ensemble coachings, career development sessions, arts administration and grant writing for musicians, and more.

We would love to create a customized partnership that engages your local higher education institution as a way of sharing costs, and are excited to create unique opportunities for students that highlights the creative capacity of domes and teaches them about the specific A/V components contained therein.

Show Details

Run time is approximately 1 hour.

The show is modular and can be reduced/expanded based on presenter request. We welcome ideas to collaborate and modify the program for outreach purposes or to include the works of local artists.

Base program includes 5-6 musical pieces performed by a maximum of 6 musicians at one time. Specific surround sound specifications can be modified to adapt to your space’s speaker array.

Below is a video of a recent full performance.

Recent Program

Below is the program from a recent Space Program concert:

Collision – Monica Bolles
Featuring Violin and Cello

So maybe we are like two black holes orbiting one another. Somehow the intense gravitational field we both exude never lets either one of us fall too deeply into each other’s black nothing. We continue to orbit each other slowly getting closer and closer until maybe one day we will merge sending immense amounts of energy pulsating throughout the universe. 

What happens when two Black Holes collide? In 2015 scientists detected gravity waves for the first time in history confirming their existence after only being theorized by Einstein. The gravity waves were detected after the collision and merger of two Black Holes. Collision is the sonic telling of a story about two lovers each with the gravitational force of a Black Hole, slowly orbiting each other over time, getting closer and closer until one day they collide. By combining artistic sonification of data sourced from the current scientific research and the textured bodies of the violin and cello Collision explores the moments right before the two massive bodies merge and the impending aftermath of their collision. 

Lost Signals and Drifting Satellites – Annie Gosfield
Featuring Violin

Annie Gosfield, whom the BBC called “A one woman Hadron collider” lives in New York City and works on the boundaries between notated and improvised music, electronic and acoustic sounds, refined timbres and noise. Her music is often inspired by the inherent beauty of found sounds, such as machines, destroyed pianos, warped 78 rpm records and jammed radio signals. Her piece Lost Signals and Drifting Satellites for solo violin and electronics is a prime example of this style for which she has become known. Combining sounds collected from satellites, static, and machines with modern techniques on the violin such as microtones and harmonics, she creates an atmosphere that exists outside of our own atmosphere.

(Un)quiet Sun – Nathan Hall

Nathan Hall’s new work for surround-sound audio and dome video evokes the regular oscillations flowing inside the Sun, which we are slowly learning about through the field of helioseismology. To evoke these folding and unfolding patterns, we hear sounds bubble, move, and drone around the space. The viewer is enveloped in patterns of orange light and NASA footage of the surface of the Sun.

SkySong - David E. Farrell
Featuring Viola, Electronics, and Video

Creating a new work for The Playground Ensemble’s Space Program was a beautiful challenge. I drew inspiration both from the new - various satellite images from NASA of Orion, the sun and moon, and the Earth – as well as the old – text from American poet Sara Teasdale. The feelings evoked from the celestial, whether viewed with or with technological assistance, seem unchanged over time. There is inspiration to be found in the mixture profoundly personal smallness and overwhelming vastness. The computer sounds might evoke some of that vast space, while the viola plays motives and melodies with a more personal character.

Text adapted from poetry of Sara Teasdale. Commissioned by The Playground Ensemble.

Night of the Four Moons – George Crumb (b. 1929)
Poetry by Federico García Lorca (1898-1936)
Featuring Voice, Flutes, Banjo, Electic Cello, Percussion

George Crumb’s Night of the Four Moons was composed in July 1969, during the historic Apollo 11 mission which culminated in humans first stepping on the moon. The evocative text from the poetry of Federico García Lorca, as well as the otherworldly combination of flute, cello, banjo, percussion, and voice, provide a haunting commentary about the scientific, symbolic, and mystical significance of lunar contact.

1. La luna está muerta, muerta...

2. Cuando sale la luna...

3. Otro Adán oscuro está soñando...

4. ¡Huye luna, luna, luna!...

Through Hardships We Become Stars – Conrad Kehn & Nicole Esquibel
Featuring Electronics and Voice + Video

Commissioned by The Playground Ensemble, Through Hardships We Become Stars is a multi-media work for spatialized audio, live vocals, percussion and video, that features manipulated ‘found object’ content from the Voyager spacecraft Golden Record. This material is reimagined and combined with new material specifically created to be performed in planetarium domes, although flatscreen stereo versions are available.

Musically, the work opens with manipulated Golden Record greetings combined with a recorded quote from Paul Hindemith’s Craft of Musical Composition. A rotating choir inspired by Kepler’s Harmonices Mundi transitions the work to the next section.

Engraved on the record is a binary code pulsar map designed to help alien life locate planet Earth. Using this binary code, pulsar wave length, distance and location as musical parameters the middle of the piece becomes a minimalist Pulsar dance party that eventually gives way to a collage of earth sounds and a  Morse code pattern that gives the work its title.

The work closes with an improvised vocal solo over a bed ambient sounds serving as a distress signal to the universe. Although the original messaging on the Voyager was optimistic and welcoming in nature, it seems future messages may be more desperate attempts to find a suitable living space as we continue to endanger our own.

About The Playground Ensemble

The Playground Ensemble is the Rocky Mountain Region’s premiere new music group. We are professional musicians, composers, educators and fans dedicated to presenting chamber music as a living art form.

Collaboration is at the heart of the Playground’s artistic vision; we commission new works by living composers, perform in support of touring improvisors, and perform regularly. We work with dancers, poets, spoken word artists, visual artists, and multi-media artists, finding inspiration across disciplines and exploring new, hybrid artistic forms.

Our efforts have been recognized and supported by numerous regional and national organizations including the Aaron Copland Fund for Music, Chamber Music America, The Amphion Foundation, The American Music Center, New Music USA, the Gay & Lesbian Fund for Colorado, the Singer Foundation and the Scientific and Cultural Facilities District.