PROGRAM NOTE

The Fantastic Voyage was commissioned by the Royal Hawaiian Band to commemorate the Mālama Honua Worldwide Voyage Hōkūle‘a and Hikianalia, two Polynesian voyaging canoes sailing across Earth’s oceans to join and grow the global movement toward a more sustainable world.

Hōkūleʻa, Star of Gladness, began as a dream of reviving the legacy of exploration, courage, and ingenuity that brought the first Polynesians to the archipelago of Hawaiʻi. The canoes that brought the first Hawaiians to their island home had disappeared from earth. Cultural extinction felt dangerously close to many Hawaiians when artist Herb Kane dreamed of rebuilding a double-hulled sailing canoe similar to the ones that his ancestors sailed. Though more than 600 years had passed since the last of these canoes had been seen, this dream brought together people of diverse backgrounds and professions. Since she was first built and launched in the 1970s, Hōkūle’a continues to bring people together from all walks of life. She is more than a voyaging canoe—she represents the common desire shared by the people of Hawaii, the Pacific, and the World to protect our most cherished values and places from disappearing.

Covering 47,000 nautical miles, 85 ports, and 26 countries, the Mālama Honua Worldwide Voyage highlights diverse cultural and natural treasures and the importance of working together to protect them. The Mālama Honua Worldwide Voyage began in 2013 with a Mālama Hawaiʻi sail around the archipelago, and will continue through 2017 when a new generation of navigators take the helm and guide Hōkūle‘a and Hikianalia back to Polynesia after circumnavigating the globe.

To commemorate this voyage, I strived to write music that would situate the listener at the forefront of a wondrous and splendid journey. It is adventure music to accompany a vision to circumnavigate the globe by the heavenly constellations and music to search and voyage into the unknown. This is music that illustrates perilous seafaring escapades, interstellar discoveries, subatomic explorations and heroic and victorious triumphs of spirit. The music is a fantastic journey of sound, a celebration for an expedition for legacy, on earth, under and over water, in space and through the stars, the heavens; a fantastic voyage.