Life on Mars (2016)
Based on Dan Felsenfeld's : "Hooked to the Silver Screen" for Solo Viola
Viola - Karen Bentley Pollick; Music - Daniel Felsenfeld; Video - Stuart Diamond
Live performance at Chapel of Good Shepherd Center in Seattle, WashingtonWayward Music SeriesDecember 21, 2016 Violin, Viola & Video Virtuosity on Winter's Solstice.
Notes by Daniel Felsenfeld:
I wrote a short solo viola piece for Nadia Sirota called "Hooked to the Silver Screen" (2011), which is a kind of free-flowing fantasia on the most astonishing song that Bowie (or, frankly, anyone) ever wrote: “Life on Mars.” I love taking a tune like this, somewhere lurking in another genre, and doing just terrible musical violence to it. I’ve likewise assaulted Leonard Cohen and Wild Cherry, as well as done terrible things to works of Debussy and Bach. Because in a certain way all music (if you buy into the whole Agon theory of Harold Bloom) does violence to the music that has come before it, and from this wrestle a new set of ideas takes root. I just wanted to be obvious and extremely brutal about it.
Notes by Stuart Diamond:
Missions to Mars have always been close to me, ever since I created a nationally syndicated television production called “Mission to Mars” that documented the original 1996 Pathfinder mission to the red planet. This video uses NASA animations from the 2011 Curiosity Mission to Mars. It tells the story of the just how lonely life on another planet can be until one finds a true m