Love Song to the Sun is a visual electric violin concerto written by and featuring Tracy Silverman. Scored for full symphony orchestra with prepared and live interactive video projections by Todd Winkler, it tells the dramatic one-day life story of a tiny bug, seen through its eyes.

Albert Schweitzer said, “When man learns to respect even the smallest being of creation, whether animal or vegetable, nobody has to teach him to love his fellow man.”

Although we may be at the top of the food chain, we are no more alive than any other living thing. Even a gnat has a real life, full of water, sun and air; full of meaning and intentions; full of sensations, perceptions and awareness we can’t even imagine. When we look at the world through another being’s eyes, or when we walk in someone else’s shoes, we see that they are also making their way through their own world, struggling with their own problems and enjoying their own pleasures. By focusing on something as seemingly insignificant as a gnat, it becomes a sort of parable, reminding us that everything on this planet has exactly the same right to be alive.

So we follow a gnat through its miraculous 1 day quest against the odds, driven by a simple instinct to go towards the light, to follow the radiant waves, the siren song of it’s mother, the sun. Born underwater at dawn, it eludes predators, swims upward and struggles to break the water’s surface. It metamorphoses in a cocoon under the midday sun, and then flies off into the mating swarm. In the evening, it loses its mate and offspring to a bird and then follows the moon’s reflection back into the water at night.

The work is continuous with no break, lasts about 30 minutes, and is in 2 Acts with a solo interlude in the middle and an overture at the beginning.

Overture

Act 1
Sunrise—The Mother Sun
Morning—Swimming to the Sky
Noon—Cocoon: Doorway to the Sun

Act 2
Afternoon—The Mating Swarm
Dusk—Offspring
Night—The Father Moon

Dedicated to my parents, who drove me to a lot of violin lessons.

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