Hard Landing (2024)

In the fall of 2024, the BBC got in touch looking for a short orchestral piece for their 25 for 2025 series, looking back musically on the first 25 years of the 21st century. They suggested my looking at the Miracle on the Hudson, the famous incident in 2009 where Captain Sully managed to safely land a plane whose engines had been incapacitated by a flock of Canadian geese. From takeoff to the unpowered landing in the Hudson River, the whole affair lasted little more than five minutes. I was fascinated with using the main events as they happened in real-time as the scaffolding for the way the piece unfolds. My piece is definitely from the vantage point of a passenger (not the calm-under-pressure Captain): from the excitement of taking off to the terror of the engines cutting out to the out-of-body feeling as the plane glides then to its landing, getting more and more pressured as it inexorably heads towards the fiercely cold water for its hard landing. An influence on my approach here comes from the Swedish film maker, Ruben Östlund, who nearly always has a standout scene in each of his films unfold almost exactly as it would in real-time.