Night Voyager // Ela Orleans

Glasgow and Paris based Polish composer and audio-visual artist Ela Orleans performs her mesmerising Night Voyager. Set to soaring music featuring live synthesiser, theremin, vocals and violin, Night Voyager features NASA archive footage of the 1969 Apollo moon mission, matching the astronauts’ emotional journey with fragments of Night Thoughts a collection of extended poetic mediations written by Edward Young in 1742. Rather than a linear re-telling, Orleans performance focuses on the wider meaning of the lunar trip and Young’s exploration of mortality, time and human folly. Although now scarcely remembered, Night Thoughts was called in its time ‘the grandest and richest poetry that human genius has ever produced’.

“Rather than a linear retelling, Orleans’s show focuses on the astronauts’ emotional journey and the wider meaning of the lunar trip.” The National

A Cryptic Commission

Premiered in 2019 at Sonica Glasgow followed by performances at Construction Festival, Ukraine, 2021, Musical Utopias, Netherlands, 2024 and Perth Concert Hall and Theatre, Scotland 2024.

Ela Orleans’ performance of Night Voyager is supported by PRS Foundation’s Beyond Borders, a co-commissioning and touring programme run in partnership with Creative Scotland, Arts Council of Wales, Arts Council of Northern Ireland and Arts Council of Ireland /An Chomhairle Ealaíon.