Program Notes

Lonely Photon is an eight-movement work inspired by Gustav Holst’s The Planets. Like Holst, I wanted to capture the character of each planet in our solar system but through a more dissonant and modern lens. A single three-note motif (F♯–F–B) runs throughout the piece, symbolizing a “photon” of heat traveling through space. The frequency of this motif reflects the temperature of each planet: the hotter the planet, the more often the motif appears. Across the movements, this lone fragment of musical energy threads the planets together, evoking the vast distances and quiet isolation of the solar system.