Stu News and Photos

When I was a disc jockey in college, this piece was one I would play quite often. It's Jean Michelle Jarre, and it's part of a larger suite which interprets, in part, the 25th anniversary of the Johnson Space Flight Center in Houston, Texas. This suite was written to be performed in concert, during the flight of a space shuttle, and this particular piece was written with the intent that during the concert, the sax part of this section of the suite was to have been performed by an astronaut on the shuttle, live, via a special link-up. Unfortunately, that saxophonist was Ron McNair and the space shuttle was The Challenger, which exploded soon after launch. The piece was eventually recorded, with Kirk Whalum on saxophone. I remember living in the wake of the Challenger disaster and being hypnotized by this section of music, entranced by what could have been and crushed by what was.