Angélica Negrón

“A Través Del Manto Luminoso”

”A través del manto luminoso” (through the luminous mantle) is a piece written for Johnny Gandelsman inspired by “A Book of Stars,” a collection of dark sky photographs taken in Puerto Rico and its islands by Javier Román-Nieves.

”A Book of Stars” includes astrophotography showcasing night skies, sunrises and sunsets between 2011-2020. The resplendent, stunning and almost surreal image titled “Blanket of seawater on saturated sand in Luquillo” which depicts a vast field of stars reflected on the ocean during sunrise on the northeast coast of the island moved me deeply and sparked the idea behind this piece.

This specific image and the book brought back childhood memories of the tradition of stargazing with my family on the evening before Three Kings day looking to find the three bright stars that represented the Three Kings (also known as Orion’s Belt) in the night sky. It also made me reflect on the night sky as an open field of possible connections to places that are distant from us while simultaneously revealing the immense distance that separates us.

The synth sounds in this piece are inspired by audio recordings of a group of ancient stars that were put together by a team of researchers from the University of Birmingham in the UK. These recordings were made using data from NASA’s Kepler/K2 missions of old stars in the Milky Way’s Messier 4 (M4) cluster — one of the oldest and closest globular clusters to the sun and Earth. By measuring the vibrations of these distant stars, scientists captured a low-pitched sound which they then sped up 1-million times to being the oscillations within the range of human hearing. ”A través del manto luminoso” is a piece about longing for connection and above all, holding on to the possibility of seeing light in darkness. —Angelica Negron

”A traves del manto luminoso” was generously commissioned by the Chamber Music Society of Central Virginia (Richmond, VA)