NASA and the Orange County Philharmonic Society, along with other musical partners, commissioned "Sun Rings," which is a multi-media concert that is being performed only once in Orange County, on Tuesday, October 14, 2003. The music is based on sounds captured by various spacecraft over the life of the space program, and is combined with a lot of images of all types from NASA's archives to give a new and broader perspective on the universe and our place in it.  The composer is Terry Riley, and it will be performed by the Kronos Quartet, a very highly regarded string quartet.

There is also a pre-concert talk, which will be given by Dr. Donald Gurnett, an astrophysicist from the University of Iowa , and by the composer, and should be very interesting in its own right.  The pre-performance talk is at 7:00 and the performance itself is at 8:00 ; both are at the Orange County Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa .

The OC Philharmonic is offering OCA a group discount of 20% for groups of 10 or more.  Anyone who's interested in the group tickets should contact Barbara Toy at btoy@cox.net by Wednesday, October 8, 2003 , so she can order the tickets.  Please be sure to include how many tickets you want and at what price level.   

The undiscounted ticket prices are $15, $30, $35 and $39.  They're all in the Orchestra section, so they should all be good.  People can order tickets at different prices and still be in the group for the purposes of the discount, though it would be more fun to have the group sitting in the same area.  Several people have indicated interest in the $30 tickets, which, with the discount, would come to $24 each.

For more information, the website for the Eclectic Orange Festival is www.eclecticorange.org. 

This should be a really great event -ììì we look forward to seeing you there!