Ad Astra Per Aspera (sc/parts) - FL/OB/BSN/PN

Ad Astra Per Aspera
for flute, oboe, bassoon, and piano
by Amber Ferenz (b. 1973) - American composer and bassoonist

This is the printed music.  For the PDF download, click HERE.

ABOUT THE MUSIC

Commissioned by the Chrystallum Quartet in honor of Colonel (ret.) Eileen Collins, a native of Elmira, NY, for her accomplishments in aerospace exploration. This project is partially, generously and graciously funded by the Arts Council of the Southern Finger Lakes and Central United Methodist Church.

Ad Astra Per Aspera is the Kansas state motto and translates roughly as “To The Stars Through Struggle”. I saw that motto daily as a young child, on the flag in my elementary school classroom. This piece is about reaching for the impossible.

Bassoonist Martha Weber reached out to me in the spring of 2024 to ask about commissioning a piece for her chamber group Chrystallum, which has the unique instrumentation of flute, oboe, bassoon and piano, telling me that there wasn’t much rep for that combination. A bit of digging revealed a mere handful of pieces, most of which were actually arrangements of other works. Chrystallum wanted something specifically composed for the Finger Lakes region of NY, and after doing some thinking, I decided to write a piece inspired by the life of Colonel (ret.) Eileen Collins, born in Elmira, NY in 1956. She became the first woman to pilot the Space Shuttle and the first woman to command a shuttle mission.

Eileen wrote a wonderful autobiography called Through the Glass Ceiling to the Stars. Her journey spoke to me on a very personal level. The Challenger disaster took place in 1986, and like many other stunned and horrified kids in my generation, I saw the shuttle explode live on TV, which had been regularly rolled into our classroom for all of the shuttle launches. Also, her incredible journey in the military before she was accepted into the NASA astronaut program resonated with my own years of military service. She fought hard for all of her assignments and the pilot training that made shuttle piloting possible. She did it with humor, grit, and courage, and she did it in the face of unimaginable misogyny in a culture that is built by men for men.

Recently, after completing this piece, I visited some friends in Cocoa Beach, FL and experienced a couple of SpaceX launches from their yard. I felt a hair-raising sense of wonder and astonishment while witnessing first a rocket and then a crewed flight heading into space and burst into tears, completely undone.

I. Pilot Dreams: teenager Eileen dreams of becoming a pilot. She experienced adversity early in her life, and she doesn’t feel like her grades and background are good enough for admission into the military pilot program, but she turns her thoughts toward the stars anyway.

II. Pilot Training: E=mc2: It takes a lot of energy to get the mass of an airplane off the ground. It takes even more to learn how to fly it. Now accepted into the pilot training program, Eileen learns how to handle military planes, not always a smooth or easy process.

III. Considering Challenger: Pilot, astronaut and mother Eileen sits with her two small children and tries to explain the Challenger explosion to them in advance of her own upcoming shuttle mission.

IV. We Each Contribute Something: At the time Eileen flew shuttle missions, the U.S. space program was focused on the ISS, and shuttles supported ISS missions with their international crews. Everyone brought something unique with them to space besides expertise, whether it was a flask of delicious whiskey, a chocolate treat, or the best story anyone had heard. Much like musical collaboration (but with much higher life/death stakes!) the astronauts worked together, pooling resources in order to complete their missions. In a world that is increasingly so very much All.About.Me. this contributive perspective feels like vital information. We need each other, and we need each other’s uniqueness in order to grow and evolve as human beings. -Amber Ferenz - Grayson, GA 2025

ABOUT THE COMPOSER

Amber Ferenz is a nonbinary, queer bassoonist and award-winning composer and arranger. Inspired deeply by the beauty, magic and mystery of the natural world, they often write pieces that weave together melodies and healing songs given by Nature with their own musical ideas. They also delight in tackling emotionally challenging material, and feel that music is a vehicle for the universal energies of transformation, catharsis, and healing.

Amber is a founding member of Elektra Winds and Queen City Winds as well as the bassoon and harp collective Voices In the Wood. They are second bassoonist with the Asheville Symphony and the former third/contra bassoonist for the Greensboro Symphony. They serve on the Board of the Bassoon Chamber Music Composition Competition (BCMCC) and have been the Camp Coordinator for the Glickman-Popkin Bassoon Camp since 2007. TrevCo Music publishes Amber’s entire wind music catalogue.