THREE FREE PERFORMANCES
during the two weekends of the Cambridge Science Festival

One Whole Step for Man is a collection of 20 entertaining and inspiring songs about space exploration. Written by eleven contemporary composers, including David Bass, Jonathan Coulton, Andrea Gaudette, David Haines, Ruth Hertzman-Miller, Daniel Kallman, Bruce Lazarus, Tim Maurice, Brian May, Lauren Mayer and Molly Ruggles, One Whole Step for Man was performed by the NCFO Science Festival Chorus as part of the thirteenth annual Cambridge Science Festival, April 12-21, 2019. The performances also included a medley of songs composed by Cambridge Public School students under the direction of David Haines, as part of David's CPS Songwriting Workshops, and a mini-opera composed by local kids with guidance from Boston Lyric Opera. The entire program was accompanied by a slideshow of song lyrics and children's artwork.

The 2019 NCFO Science Festival Chorus comprises more than 40 adults and children (ages 6 and up) from Cambridge and surrounding communities.

A complete set of lyrics from One Whole Step for Man is available HERE.

You may peruse/download the program booklet from One Whole Step for Man HERE (when it has been completed).

See below for demos of the music from One Whole Step for Man and information about the composers and lyricists who wrote it.

Jonathan Coulton attended Yale University, where he sang close harmony and prepared for a life of writing software. He quit his day job in 2003 and has attracted a vast, loyal following of fellow social misfits with his quirky, geeky humor and considerable skill as a songwriter and performer. His major works include such anthems as "Code Monkey", "Re: Your Brains", and "Skullcrusher Mountain".

One Whole Step for Man features one song by Jonathan Coulton:

• I'm Your Moon – In 2006, after the International Astronomical Union downgraded Pluto to a "dwarf planet", Mr. Coulton wrote "I'm Your Moon", a song of consolation sung by Charon to her sister Kuiper Belt object.
  [ performance audio / performance with slide show / demo ]

Like Jonathan Coulton, David Bass sang close harmony at Yale while preparing for a career in engineering, quit his day job to write music, has attracted a loyal following, and has a beard. There the resemblance ends. A composer of pretentious music as a teenager, David wrote the distinctly unpretentious Space Opera in 1997 for the enjoyment of his three young children, their friends, and their families. He founded NCFO in 1999 to perform Space Opera and has since written three more, including The Coronation of Esther, Kids Court and Springtime for Haman. David continues to write music whenever he can avoid taking himself too seriously.

One Whole Step for Man features one song by David Bass:

• Droids in Space (world premiere) – Sending humans into space is exciting and romantic, but costly and dangerous. Miniaturization, automation and robotics have advanced to the point that there is little people can do in space that can't be done better and more cheaply by machines.
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Andrea Gaudette has been playing music professionally since age 14, when her first job carried the title "substitute organist" for her parish church. She holds a bachelor’s degree from New England Conservatory and a master’s in music education from The Boston Conservatory. Andrea has been teaching piano, theory, composition, voice, choir, instrumental ensembles and creative arts to children in a variety of settings since 1988. Andrea lives in Cambridge with her husband and 21-year-old daughter. They have been active in NCFO since 2006.

Richard worked on the Apollo project in the 60's with the aerothermochemistry group in the Boeing space division, investigating the return module heat shield integrity upon reentry in earth's atmosphere. He subsequently worked locally at Polaroid as a principal chemical engineer. At 17, he began his second profession as a keyboardist (piano, organ, and harpsichord) at many churches, currently substituting in Marin County, California.

One Whole Step for Man features one song by Andrea Gaudette, plus a song and a mini-opera written by Andrea in collaboration with young children during one of her songwriting workshops in the Cambridge Public Schools:

• Re-entry (additional lyrics by Richard S. Gaudette, world premiere) – Spacecraft returning from the moon encounters the Earth's atmosphere at nearly 25,000 miles per hour. Air friction increases the heat shield temperature to about 5000ºF. Without a light, strong heat shield that could dissipate heat by several mechanisms, Apollo missions wouldn't have been possible.
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• Trees (written with young school children, world premiere) – Like David Haines, Andrea Gaudette works with young children, guiding them as they write songs about some aspect of their science curriculum. Inbal Alon's ESL class from the Graham & Parks School makes a guest appearance at One Whole Step for Man.
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• Brave Stars (written with school children, world premiere) – The libretto, music, and piano sound effects for this mini-opera were created in a workshop for 2nd-4th graders held at the King Community School in Cambridge, directed by Andrea and Lydia Jane Graeff, co-sponsored by Boston Lyric Opera. The finale aria was composed in a workshop with Debbie Sullivan’s 3rd Grade music students at Graham and Parks School. NCFO chorus members Verity Gould and Ellen and Yifei Sun completed the music. Andrea then added orchestration to complete the piece. The opera's story was inspired by a fascinating field trip to the Harvard Smithsonian Observatory.
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Trained at Bristol University, London's Guildhall School, and Banff School of Fine Arts, David Haines has written fifteen music theater works, including The Puzzle Jigs, which was performed by NCFO in 2003 and 2008. He has worked with many thousands of schoolchildren and has a special interest in using song to enhance the science curriculum. The NCFO Science Festival Chorus performed David's science oratorios Lifetime: Songs of Life and Evolution in 2007 and 2012 and Powers of Ten in 2008 and 2014. The latter was the official opening event of the first USA Science and Engineering Festival in Washington DC. David has been the Cambridge Science Festival's Songwriter-in-Residence from 2011 to 2017. He lives and teaches in Teignmouth, Devon in southwestern England, a stunningly beautiful town that is well worth visiting. If you do, David invites you to stay at his lovely Airbnb.

One Whole Step for Man features four songs by David Haines, plus a collection of songs written by David in collaboration with young children during his songwriting workshops in the Cambridge Public Schools:

• Cool Moon – A haunting account of the Moon's cold lifelessness. Surprisingly, there is water beneath the lunar surface and in areas of craters in perpetual shadow, potentially a valuable resource for future human settlements there.
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• Dawntreader (world premiere) – Chemical rockets are not the only method for propelling spacecraft into and through space. We can also tap into energy from Earth's rotation, orbital motion of other planets, electrostatic repulsion of ions, and the solar wind, among other sources.
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• Exoplanet Explorer – David says his meeting with MIT Astrophysicist Sara Seager in her 14th floor office overlooking the Charles River was an inspiring glimpse into a modern-day explorer’s mind. "She’s evidently a rigorous scientist who moves freely and easily in a mathematical world I can only vaguely appreciate, but she’s driven by a passion to explore our cosmos and is riding a wave of tangible excitement towards the near-certain discovery of an Earth-like planet – perhaps even bearing life – within the next few years." Composed as the Cambridge Science Festival composer-in-residence. Solo by Sarah Eastman.
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• ISS - Yes, Yes, That's Me! (world premiere) – The first modules of the International Space Station were put in low Earth orbit in 1998, and this orbiting observatory/ laboratory/low gravity factory has been continuously occupied for more than 20 years. A joint venture between the American, Russian, Canadian, European and Japanese space agencies, ISS is also envisioned to provide transportation and maintenance, and to act as a staging base for possible future missions to the Moon, Mars and asteroids over the next decade.
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• Songs written with young school children (world premiere) – Every year David Haines works with about 50 classrooms in the Cambridge schools, guiding the students as they write a song about some aspect of their science curriculum. These are some songs that touch on space travel:
  • Planetary Family Tree – The planets of the solar system are named for characters in Greek and Roman mythology.
  • Unsung Hero – Without Michael Collins staying in the Lunar Orbiter, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin never could have been the first to walk on the moon.
  • Guinea Pig on the Moon – Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation predicts guinea pigs will weigh different amounts on different planets, proportional to the mass of the planet divided by its radius squared. For the moon that works out to about 1/6 Earth's gravity.
  • Ruff Ruff Universe – Sirius, the Dog Star, is a binary star in Canis Major and is the brightest star in the night sky. It is one of the closest stars to Earth, but still 50.6 trillion miles away (pay no attention to those other digits, they're not significant).
  • A Little Push Goes a Long Way – If you think you know what gravity is, Einstein's Theory of General Relativity will quickly disabuse you of that notion.
    [ performance audio / performance with slide show / demo ]

Ruth Hertzman-Miller is a Boston-area physician and musician who has studied composition with John Stewart at Harvard, John Morrison at Longy, and Stephen Savage at New England Conservatory. She performs regularly with NCFO and was last seen as an a cappella singing droid in the 2019 production of Space Opera.

Meg Muckenhoupt works for OpenBiome in Cambridge. She is widely published, but she feels her finest work was “Horton Sees a Pluto,” which appeared in the Annals of Improbable Research. Remember, a planet’s a planet no matter how small. She is delighted to hear her lyrics debut in this year’s Cambridge Science Festival.

One Whole Step for Man features one song by Ruth Hertzman-Miller and Meg Muckenhoupt:

• Space Time-Out (world premiere) – If a spacecraft were to make a round-trip voyage at very nearly the speed of light, significantly less time will have elapsed on the ship than back home on Earth. Space Time-Out includes quotations by Albert Einstein and Brian Greene and a musical quotation by Mozart.
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Daniel Kallman's compositions for orchestra, winds, and choir are widely published and performed across North America, Europe and East Asia. His steady stream of commissions includes music for worship, theater, dance, and the young musician. Kallman has composed for the National Symphony Orchestra, the Air Force Academy Band, the Hong Kong Children's Choir, the Minnesota Orchestra, A Prairie Home Companion, and a wide variety of vocal and instrumental ensembles. The principal publishers of Kallman’s music are Morning Star Music (church choir), Hal Leonard (choral), Shawnee/Mark Foster Press (children’s choir), Boosey and Hawkes (winds and choral), and Lauren Keiser Music (orchestral). All of Kallman’s works are catalogued on his website.

Christine Kallman is a playwright, lyricist, poet and musician. Her work has been supported and produced by arts organizations, theaters, schools, colleges and churches. She has taught music and theater to young people in the classroom, theater camp, and private studio. Among her works are full- length plays, one-acts, and musicals, including Donata’s Gift, a holiday musical based on the Italian legend of Old Befana. Her most recent play, A Falling Out, is set at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis and was presented last spring in a staged reading supported by the Southeastern Minnesota Arts Council through a McKnight Artists Grant. In addition to writing song lyrics, Kallman has received several commissions to write hymn texts.

One Whole Step for Man features two songs by Daniel and Christine Kallman:

• Earthrise (world premiere) – Observations of our home planet made by astronauts orbiting Earth. The text for this song draws from comments made by astronauts who have experienced the view of Earth from outer space, including: Ron Garan (NASA), Jean-Francois Clervoy (France), Yuri Gagarin (Russian, First Human in Space), Karen Nyberg (NASA), Sandra Magnus (NASA), James Irwin (NASA, Apollo 15), and Mike Massimino (NASA).
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• Einstein-Rosen Bridge Strut (world premiere) – Faster-than-light travel is impossible, but in 1935, Albert Einstein and his colleague Nathan Rosen used the Theory of General Relativity to propose the existence of "bridges" through space-time. These bridges connect two different points in space-time, theoretically creating a shortcut that could reduce travel time and distance. Such "wormholes" remain theoretical and have never been observed, but they're fun to dream about.
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Composer Bruce Lazarus's music includes pieces for piano, solo voice, chorus, chamber ensembles, as well as several songs commissioned by NCFO. His works range from the 45-minute “celestial” piano cycle, Musical Explorations of the Messier Catalogue of Star Clusters and Nebulae, to his entertaining Carrolling: The Lewis Carroll Project. He studied composition at Juilliard, where he earned his B.M. and M.M. in music composition and theory, and later earned his PhD in music theory at Rutgers University. Dr. Lazarus is Music Director for the Joffrey Ballet School.

Author and lyricist Bobbi Katz once told Contemporary Authors: "I write for children because I hope to join those writers and artists who delight, sensitize, and give hope to children." A former editor at Random House, Katz has had success publishing her own rhyming picture books for elementary school students. These range from the sublime, such as American History Poems and We, the People, to the outright ridiculous, such as A Rumpus of Rhymes: A Book of Noisy Poems. Whatever the tone, Katz uses rhyme to catch children's attention in order to teach and entertain them. American History Poems and We, the People introduce young students to important figures in American history as well as fictitious representative citizens from previous centuries.

One Whole Step for Man features three songs by Bruce Lazarus:

• Between Points A and B – It's hard to comprehend how big space is and how profound an impediment to space travel its size is.
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• Moondust Footprint (lyrics by Bobbi Katz, world premiere) – Most of us who were around in 1969 can remember exactly where we were and how we felt when Apollo 11 brought the first humans to the surface of the Moon.
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• Sally Ride (world premiere) – Sally Ride was not only the first female American astronaut, she is still the youngest American ever to have traveled to space (at age 32) and the first known LGBTQ astronaut.
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Tim Maurice is a classically trained musician working as an arranger, music director, and pianist. He has written and recorded music for several independent film projects, ranging from short films to web series. His latest, “Searchdog,” screened at the 2016 Palm Springs International Film Festival and was an audience-voted “Best in the Fest” selection. Born in Maine, Tim attended Bates College, where he studied piano, and Berklee College of Music, where he earned a B.M. in Film Scoring. Tim has done extensive orchestration and arranging work for NCFO in the past, and this is his fourth original composition for the group.

One Whole Step for Man features one song by Tim Maurice:

• Weightless (world premiere) – Astronauts in orbit aren't really weightless, it just seems that way because they are actually in a prolonged, sustained fall back to Earth.
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Brian May studied physics and mathematics at Imperial College, London, but suspended his PhD studies in 1974 to pursue musical interests as a composer, singer and guitarist. He resumed his studies after a 32-year hiatus and received his doctorate in astrophysics in 2007. May was then named Chancellor of Liverpool John Moores University, a post he held until 2013. He has published numerous books and articles and collaborates with NASA on the New Horizons project. He is an active animal welfare advocate and vice president of the RSPCA. Musically he is best known as the co-founder and lead guitarist of the rock band Queen.

One Whole Step for Man features one song by Brian May:

• Thirty-nine (world premiere arrangement by David Bass) – Interstellar travel by humans will be practical only at near-light speed or with the astronauts in prolonged suspended animation. Either way, the travelers would return younger than the loved ones they left behind.
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Lauren Mayer is a California-based, award-winning writer and entertainer, who has performed hundreds of custom-written programs. She is a summa cum laude graduate of Yale University, the founder of Curriculum Rocks (producing award-winning children's educational music), the writer of several published musicals, and a five-time recipient of the San Francisco Cabaret Gold Award. She has recorded five albums of comedy songs and writes weekly topical comedy songs for her YouTube channel with almost 2,200 subscribers (thus disproving her teenage son’s claim that she’d never get a channel going because ‘over 100 views is viral for old people’).

One Whole Step for Man features two songs by Lauren Mayer:

• Science Fact & Science Fiction (world premiere) – The technology depicted in the 1960s in Star Trek is in some cases prescient and in others ridiculous, but we sometimes can't be completely sure which.
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• Women in Space (world premiere) – Although today we think nothing of female astronauts, it's worth remembering that it was once a revolutionary idea, and frustrations remain. Just last month, the first all-female spacewalk had to be reassigned because the International Space Station didn’t have two spacesuits that fit the women.
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A native of Massachusetts, Molly Ruggles has played  piano her whole life, composed since she was 4, and is a vocalist and recording artist. Molly performs  regularly throughout the Boston area. She has taught  songwriting classes at MIT, and her music is featured regularly at the UU church of Medford. When not singing, playing, listening, teaching, composing, or writing plays, she writes about educational technology at MIT and spends time with her beloved daughter.

One Whole Step for Man features two songs by Molly Ruggles:

• Animal Astronauts (arranged by David Bass, world premiere) – Since the late 1940s, we have launched all kinds of creatures past the Kármán Line (100 km above Earth's surface), paving the way for human space exploration.
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• Little Rover That Could (world premiere) – There have been about 50 missions to Mars since 1960, and most failed. But Pathfinder in 1997, which included Sojourner, the first Martian rover, exceeded all expectations and at much lower cost than previous missions.
  [ performance audio / performance with slide show / demo ]​