Program Note:   

I have long had an intense recurring dream: in it I am flying through the air unaided, looking down at the world and feeling ecstatic. I fall. In the falling, I find liberation. I have always associated flying with creativity, with freedom, with exploration, with life, and with spirits (good and ill). As a pre-teen, I spoke and wrote about my identification with the mythological character of Icarus so frequently that my mother sculpted him for me. "He'll outlive us both," she laughed. "Despite himself. Such is the nature of art." Fifty years later, the statue is still with me.

I wonder which, if either, of my sons will take him along for the flight after I am gone? The four-minute-long monologue imagines Icarus the night before his fateful flight, still trapped on the island with his Father, filled with subdued dread and excitement, and alone.

The Albany Symphony Orchestra commissioned Icarus for premiere by Susan Martula on 4 March 2007 at the Albany Institute for History and Art as part of an American music festival.