Song Description

Musically speaking, the main theme of my Visitations Suite resembles a John Williams movie score. It opens with some big, orchestral "crashes and booms" but soon gives way to a haunting, chromatic melody played on flute, with a bell and string ostinato behind it. This statement plays once again adding oboe playing down the octave with pizzicato strings answering the woodwinds. The repeated theme barely has time to finish when-WHOOSH-we are swept up by a cacaphonous wash of UFO sound FX playing against a low, ominous synthesized bass and a pulsing exotic 7/4 rhythmic counterpoint. It abruptly ends on a giant Db major chord, (replete with the lydian #4 note, everpresent in big movie scores) somehow reassuring us that, yes, everything will be ok after all. This is a refinement of an earlier version that served as the theme and title music for a planetarium show soundtrack I composed years ago. I liked it so much I decided to flesh it out a bit...what you now hear is the result.