Andrew Webb-Mitchell

The latest film for Andrew’s orchestral song cycle, Songs of Awe and Wonder has been released and is now available to watch on YouTube. Earthscape is compiled from over 20,000 individual still images taken on board the International Space Station and is part of a series of videos made for the Songs of Awe and Wonder album, recorded with Filharmonie Brno in 2011. If you click the captions button, you can read lyrics and/or a guide to the images/astronomy.

Since the first human spaceflight was launched on April 12, 1961 by Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, men and women from 38 nations have flown in space. Those who have came back with a changed perspective and reverence for the planet Earth. Gone are the political boundaries. Gone are the boundaries between nations. We are all one people and each is responsible for maintaining Earth’s delicate and fragile balance. We are her stewards and must take care of her for future generations.

My first view – a panorama of brilliant deep blue ocean, shot with shades of green and gray and white – was of atolls and clouds. Close to the window I could see that this Pacific scene in motion was rimmed by the great curved limb of the Earth. It had a thin halo of blue held close, and beyond, black space. I held my breath, but something was missing – I felt strangely unfulfilled. Here was a tremendous visual spectacle, but viewed in silence. There was no grand musical accompaniment; no triumphant, inspired sonata or symphony. Each one of us must write the music of this sphere for ourselves.
– Charles Walker, USA

Looking outward to the blackness of space, sprinkled with the glory of a universe of lights, I saw majesty – but no welcome. Below was a welcoming planet. There, contained in the thin, moving, incredibly fragile shell of the biosphere is everything that is dear to you, all the human drama and comedy. That’s where life is; that’s were all the good stuff is.
– Loren Acton, USA

For the first time in my life I saw the horizon as a curved line. It was accentuated by a thin seam of dark blue light – our atmosphere. Obviously this was not the ocean of air I had been told it was so many times in my life. I was terrified by its fragile appearance.
– Ulf Merbold, Federal Republic of Germany

Suddenly, from behind the rim of the moon, in long, slow-motion moments of immense majesty, there emerges a sparkling blue and white jewel, a light, delicate sky-blue sphere laced with slowly swirling veils of white, rising gradually like a small pearl in a thick sea of black mystery. It takes more than a moment to fully realize this is Earth . . . home.
– Edgar Mitchell, USA