Program Note:   

The splendid auroras borealis, named after Aurora, the Roman goddess of dawn, and boreas, the Greek name for the north wind, are the result of the emissions of photons in the Earth's upper atmosphere.

I saw them for the first time one summer night during the early 70s when—as a boy working on my uncle's dairy farm deep in the countryside just shy of Michigan's Upper Peninsula—lying on my back in the middle of a hay field and looking up at the sky, I looked up into the night sky.

The first, somewhat pointillist section of the piece is called "excited state." The second section, featuring sustained notes, is called "aurorae." The third section of the piece is entitled "Milky Way.” The last section of the piece is called "burning sky." It evokes the distant heat lightning that began after the sky had cleared. It went on for an hour, and didn't stop until clouds and crackling thunder rolled in, driving me in to bed.

Composed to celebrate Troy Peter's inaugural season as music director of the Youth Orchestras of San Antonio, Northern Lights consists of four sections, each of which lasts approximately sixty-five seconds.