W. Steve Wilson

Let’s Celebrate – New Instruments

A Note about the blog posts from the future [CE 2224]: In January of 2021, with Perseverance due to land on Mars the next month, NASA activated their experimental Quantum Transmitter. The transmitter was designed to communicate with Perseverance, without regard to location and at faster than light speeds—near real-time. Unfortunately, they lost the connection after the initialization routine was completed. However, as an unintended consequence, NASA connected with a specific locus in the space-time continuum located on the Moon in 2224. That locus was the storage device of the quantum computer of a popular blog site. It is from that blog site that these blog entries are extracted. I hope you enjoy a peek into our future, and hopefully, I’m not violating some temporal directive. So far, no visit from the time cops.

Guest Author: Apinya Ungrangsee, Musical Director, Plinius Symphonic Orchestra (PSO)

Posted: Monday, May 24, 2224 (Earth Standard Calendar)

Since its founding one hundred fifty years ago in 2074, the PSO has been hoping to someday present a concert with instruments manufactured entirely on Luna.

My fellow Lunarites, that time is now.

For quite a while, Luna has manufactured brass and woodwinds, percussion, and even pianos. But quality string instruments had been eluding us. The shortage of the proper wood for violins, violas, and cellos and the high cost of shipping finished instruments from Earth has limited the number made from natural materials. Most of our talented musicians have shared the few imports available and relied on manufactured materials for most of our string section.

That constraint is now over. When Plinius was first founded and the agricultural sections were brought online, the founding musical director convinced the city government to set aside a small plot for some special trees. At his own expense, Maestro Puente shipped Alpine Spruce saplings from the Fiemme Valley in Italy to the Moon. Those trees, replanted several times, flourished in the controlled environment and over the last twenty-five years have been judiciously harvested.

The final violin, manufactured on Luna from trees that started their lives in the same forest, “Il Bosco Che Suona”—The Musical Woods, which yielded the wood for the famous Stradivarius instruments made five hundred years ago, was delivered.

The entire string section now plays instruments created from woods grown on Luna and manufactured by our own local luthiers.

Join us on Saturday, June 17, 2224, for a fabulous evening of music and celebration as the Plinius Symphonic Orchestra welcomes soloist Joachim Branson, playing selections from the 17th and 18th Centuries in honor of the completion of our Luna Strings.