Commissioned by Town Hall Symphony Hall and Birmingham Jazz as part of the Sounds of Space weekend, and first performed at Symphony Hall on Friday 8 October 2010.

I. From Nothing
II. Between Two Worlds (for Sun Ra)
III. Star Clusters
IV. Musickosmos (for Carl Sagan)

The Steve Tromans Debop Band:
Steve Tromans – piano and direction
Miles Levin – drums
Chris Mapp – double bass
Aaron Diaz – trumpet

The title M u s i c k o s m o s has a double function. It is in part named in celebration of the extraordinary postive power of music-making (‘musicking’) in uniting past, present and future in the musical ‘moment’. It also celebrates our hopeful and continued optimism in the face of an indifferent, often hostile, universe. Given the fragility and loneliness of humanity in the vastness of the kosmos, it is our songs that lift us up to the stars. M u s i c k o s m o s is my song to the stars.

I. From Nothing
Ex nihilo nihil fit. From nothing, nothing comes. The beginning of the universe, and the question of what comes before the beginning. The cosmic chicken and the cosmic egg. In an eternally cycling universe, the question has no meaning. Ex nihilo nihil fit. Nothing comes from nothing. To think of something prior or primordial is to attempt to determine the beginning of a perfect circle. Stop thinking in finite and start thinking infinite. Find affinity with Infinity: . An infinitely looping cosmic rhythmus. The deeply, profoundly funky rhythmic cycles-within-cycles of a dynamic universe: unfolding out and folding back in, unfolding out and folding back in. A creation story for eternal optimists.

II. Between Two Worlds (for Sun Ra)
A tribute to the cosmic bandleader and composer-performer, Sun Ra. Born of Earth, reborn on Saturn. And a meditation on our cosmic predicament. We are no longer Earthbound: humanity’s future is in the stars. Dressed in full ceremonial space-age garb, surrounded by his celestial family on Earth, Sun Ra points an unwavering finger skywards, and counts down the band...

III. Star Clusters
Star Clusters are groups of stars, gravitationally bound to each other. These remain related together as they move through space, and in their stellar closeness I find a familial warmth of belonging. A personal projection into the wastes of interstellar space. This movement is also a portrait of the musico-gravitational forces at work in the Steve Tromans Debop Band in its current incarnation.

IV. Musickosmos (for Carl Sagan)
A little over three decades ago an extraordinary project reached its Earthly climax. The brainchild of astronomer, astrophysicist, cosmologist and author Dr. Carl Sagan, two golden records containing 115 images and a variety of natural sounds – those made by surf, wind, and thunder, and animal sounds, the songs of birds and whales – were attached to the space probes Voyager 1 and Voyager 2. To these fascinating documents were added recordings of musics from different cultures and eras, spoken greetings in fifty-five languages, and printed messages from US President Jimmy Carter and U.N. Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim. Towards the end of the first decade of the 21st Century, these Voyager spacecraft became the third and fourth human artifacts to escape entirely from the solar system, breaking free of the gravitational attraction of our sun and venturing forth into the cold reaches of interstellar space. Inscribed by hand on the surface of each of these golden time capsules were the words: “To the makers of music — all worlds, all times.” This last movement, and this new work as a whole, is inspired by and dedicated to the sentiment and sensibility of Sagan’s message to the kosmos. And, in no small part, to the mind-blowingly cosmical notion of an extraterrestrial music-making suggested by that tantilising ‘s’ at the end of “worlds”.

- Steve Tromans, 2010