Night Sky was written for violinist Marc Djokic and percussionist Beverley Johnston as part of a concert scheduled for May 2018. A belated gift for Bev's 60th birthday, it was written around the time of the total eclipse in August 2017 - during the time of its composition I was immersed in reading the book Hamlet's Mill by Giorgio De Santillana and Hertha von Dechend, an exhaustive thesis proposing that world mythology has its origins in astronomical observation, particularly in the phenomenon of the "precession of the equinoxes." In Night Sky the two instruments "phase" against each other, one cycling at 12/8 against the other's 11/8, completing three full cycles. The harmonic root of each cycle is a major third lower than that of the previous one (the three roots form an augmented chord, so any transposition of this chord by its embedded interval will create an inverted arrangement of its constituent pitch classes - in other words, an exact clone of itself). Within this macrostructure, the music of each cycle vaguely flirts melodically and harmonically with the 1971 pop song Color My World by the rock group Chicago, a song which has been solidly embedded in the mythical memory of my generation. The lyrics of the song capture all the words that I would like to share with my life-partner of the past 17 years on the occasion of her seminal anniversary.
