Cypress Choral Music We Are Stars - Kristofferson - SSATBB

Composer: Kenley Kristofferson
Format: Choral Octavo
Voicing: SSATBB with piano accompaniment

An avid Carl Sagan fan, Kenley has created this powerful work for good choirs.

"This choral anthem is wrapped in warmth, thick harmonies and lyrical melodies as it manifests the connectedness of life, the Earth and the stars through a united chemistry. Most stars are made of the three lightest elements in the universe: Hydrogen, Helium and Lithium. Upon their death, some smaller stars simply burn out and fade away, but the elder and more massive stars do something entirely different. These cosmic titans cave into their core, creating enormous heat, light and energy not seen since the Big Bang almost fourteen billion years ago.

But, as these stars collapse, the new heat and density enables their lighter elements to be forged into larger, heavier and stronger ones like Nitrogen, Carbon, Oxygen, Iron and so forth. This process is called nuclear fusion and, in short, it fills the universe with a veritable something rather than nothing.

As this fertile star gives way, it gets heavier and denser until it compresses to a point where it can be compressed no further and is brimming with energy. Unable to sustain that form, it explodes through space and seeds the universe with heavy elements. These elements go on to attract to one another through space and gravity to form asteroids, planetoids and sometimes planets. Earth is one of these planets. From the calcium in our bones to cobalt in our mountains, all things are connected through a common solar origin. The stellar nursery in the night sky reminds us that all stars, all flowers, all mountains and all life are all just threads in a cosmic tapestry -- each thread is important in itself, but when woven together, the picture is not only more clear, but also more beautiful." - Kenley Kristofferson
Duration: 3:50