Like a Single Star in the Night Sky

for Orchestra [2 (+pic.), 2 (+cor ang.), 2, 2 / 4, 2, 3, 1 / timp., 2 perc. / harp / strings (12, 10, 8, 6, 4)]

2021

*1st place winer of the 2023 American Prize in Composition, high school orchestra division

*1st place winner of the 2022-2023 Metropolitan Youth Orchestra Emerging Composers Competition (orchestral division)

*Winner of the 2021 National Young Composers Challenge

Duration: c. 5 mins

Premiere: April 10, 2022 | Orlando Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Christopher Wilkins

Program Note:

The idea for this piece came from my fascination with the mysterious and unknown nature of stars. It had fascinated me how one single star - seen from Earth as a tiny spot of light surrounded by utter darkness - is actually this giant and majestic planet far, far away. That same glimmer of light seems so trivial when looked at from Earth, yet, it is actually something just as significant as the Earth itself.

This piece explores the perspectives of that single star. A transformation from a diverse and complicated planet, to one single dot in the entirety of the night sky. Imagine the start of the piece as a very close-up unit inside the star, perhaps a water molecule. Then, we slowly zoom out and we make out colors, then, some blurry shapes. As we zoom out more, we start seeing how the planet is cohesively put together, how the shapes, the colors, the activity and motion all work together to form this star. We begin to see the full picture of the magnificent and complex star. After that, we keep zooming out from the star, the complicated details of the star get swollen up by darkness, the shapes and motion that once existed is distorted and forgotten, leaving the planet to be just one single pixel swallowed by complete darkness.