I wrote this piece as part of the 2025 Prison Creative Arts Project (PCAP) Collaboration Concert. PCAP works with incarcerated people, offering them the opportunity to express themselves through the arts, and each composer on the concert chose an artwork created by a PCAP participant on which to base a piece of music. As a big fan of science fiction, I was immediately struck by Nathan Morrice's painting of a beautiful watery landscape with a ringed planet visible in the pale sky behind the mountains. It could be the setting for any number of fantastical stories, and immediately made me feel as if I had something in common with the artist. I imagine the planet in the painting as the destination, and my music as the journey to it. Riding in a little silver spaceship through the starscape, we hear the steady rhythm of the spaceship engine, the twinkling of the stars, and the anxiety that comes from being all alone in the void of space. The crew of the spaceship experiences a few ups and downs, including a loss of gravity, but in the end, they arrive safely on a new world beyond their wildest dreams. This piece will be included on FLYDLPHN's debut album, to be released in 2027.

Recording credit: Lexi Eubanks, flute; Oliver Bishop, clarinet; Bryce Richardson, bassoon; Emani Barber, double bass; Fitz Neeley and Olivia Cirisan, percussion; recording by Nelson Walker