A rancher, isolated in the countryside, hears a strange noise and goes to investigate. He finds one of his fields strewn with unidentifiable pieces of metal.
In 1947, the country’s obsession with UFOs started with that scene in Roswell, N.M.
In 2000, students and faculty members in the MSU Wind Symphony are translating it into music with a new version of Michael Daugherty’s “UFO” at 8 p.m. Saturday in the Wharton Center’s Great Hall. The version is being performed for the first time.
The composer was inspired by television to create the piece.
“I got the idea one night watching an old sci-fi B movie on television,” Daugherty said.
The piece was first written for a symphony and a percussion soloist, but Daugherty and MSU Director of Bands John Whitwell adapted it for the wind symphony.
Daugherty is a composer in residence with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra and is a faculty member at the University of Michigan.
The piece revolves around a percussion soloist, in this case music Associate Professor Alison Shaw, because the “alien” sounds her instruments produce mirror the otherworldliness of the subject.
“I also thought that percussion can imitate sounds that you’ve never heard before,” Daugherty said. “I was also thinking of the percussion soloist as an alien.”
The performance will be very theatrical.
Shaw will roam the stage as she performs and will have a big entrance, befitting her status as a metaphorical extraterrestrial.
“There's an element of drama through lighting and through (Shaw) moving different places in the hall and the visual drama of seeing 52 percussion instruments spread out across the stage,” Whitwell said.
There are three percussion stations in front of the band, Shaw said. “I play each movement at different stations on the stage. I also move around between the stations to improvise.”
The piece is full of improvisation.
“We leave room for a five minute section at the end of the fourth movement,” Shaw said. “It leaves it completely open for the soloist.”
The symphony will perform four other pieces, including Aaron Copland’s “Fanfare for the Common Man” and Tchaikovsky’s “March from Symphony No. 6.”
The concert is free for students and $6 for the general public. For more information, call the Wharton Center box office at 432-2000.
