Looking to the Cosmos: A Conversation with Patricia Brennan on ‘Of the Near and Far’ (Part One)

For eons, humanity has looked up at the vastness of the night sky in wonder. The pinholes of light shining through the darkness evoke feelings of comfort and familiarity, even as things seem so distant and mysterious. The stars leave us facing some of the greatest existentialist inquiries: Who am I in the broader picture? How did I get here? What else is out there? Interestingly, as we advance towards answering some of these lingering questions, yet more emerge. The Voyager 2 spacecraft has gone further into the depths of space than ever imaginable. By ingenuity and sheer luck, the probe is a little under thirteen billion miles away from Earth. An impressive feat, no doubt, but a mere drop in a vast sea when you consider that it is equal to only about nineteen light hours in a universe with a ninety-three billion light-year radius. And then there are the lines of thought only infrequently explored, like what is the connection between music and the cosmos? This is where Patricia Brennan’s Of the Near and Far (Pyroclastic, 2025) shines.

Brennan is one of today’s most compelling compositional voices. Her septet’s Breaking Stretch (Pyroclastic, 2024) dominated the year-end lists when it was released, appearing not only on our site but also on the Francis Davis Jazz Poll, El Intruso’s annual survey of international music journalists, and even taking the designation of Downbeat’s Album of the Year. But when she’s not revolutionizing the vibraphone and marimba, Brennan is an amateur astronomer. And that hobby lies at the crux of Near and Far. Looking through her telescope, she mapped certain constellations and converted her findings into pitches. These pitches then – often incorporating things like the shape of a constellation, its namesake, and its mythos – into songs.

Brennan is hardly the first to express their admiration of the area outside our planet’s gravitational bounds to music. Gustav Holst trekked around the planets in our solar system. Sun Ra saw space as a place to escape the racism of his surroundings. Pink Floyd meditated on interstellar chaos. Often, however, those depictions are inherently built upon our cultural perceptions of space, not scientific reality. Brennan does something wholly different. In effect, Of the Near and Far brings the vibrant luminosity of the stars down to earth. It finds a way to make the constellations’ existence in a region outside of sound a sonic reality. In so doing, Brennan exposes connections between the objects that fill our skies and those that fill our ears. Connections too deep to ignore or write off as mere happenstance. Why are the maps of constellations so well integrated with musical structures? Is it purely a function of mathematics? Is it that both reflect a divine creator? Philosophers, scientists, and theologians could debate these topics for generations, but as Brennan’s work proves, the existence of such connections is undeniable.

To explore further, the vibraphonist-marimbaist assembled a hearty crew. Under the conduction of Eli Greenhoe the hazy auras of string quartet (violinists Modney and Pala Garcia, violist Kyle Armbrust, and cellist Michael Nicolas), jazz combo (pianist Sylvie Courvoisier, guitarist Miles Okazaki, bassist Kim Cass, percussionist John Hollenbeck) and electronics (Arktureye) pull one another into a shared orbit, with the leader’s masterful mallets and compositions propelling each. The result is pieces that build on the sheer power of the ensemble’s size to rocket not only beyond the genred origins of the music’s influences but towards entirely new terrains. One can read Brian Kiwanuka’s review for a more thorough breakdown, but suffice it to say, it is a work of beautiful movement. Moments on the album – particularly on “Aquarius” – make the listener feel as if they are weightlessly floating in the air. “Lyra” is an elegant tour through a field of light. The closer, “When You Star Into the Abyss,” flies through a black hole into an alternate dimension.

In all, Of the Near and Far is more than just the latest expedition of a great composer surrounded by gifted artists. It is a record that shoots for the creative stratosphere and safely lands listeners bold enough to join the voyage into the great beyond.

PostGenre: One thing that is really cool about Of the Near and Far is how, listening to it, there are moments where you feel like you are floating in space.

Patricia Brennan: I am so happy to hear that. Whenever I put out a new album, I always get nervous about how it will be received. That is especially true with this one. Because it is so different from Breaking Stretch, I wondered how people would receive it. And I hear you when you say it feels like you are floating when you listen to it. Especially on “Aquarius,” I get the same feeling too.

PG: Was it difficult to capture that feeling in the record?

PB: Well, “Aquarius” was a very simple piece because it’s just a chord progression and a melody over the star pattern. There are other things I also considered for it, like how to have the strings create a fractal effect by having each play a completely different rhythmic cycle, so they never line up but get close to doing so. I made them almost line up so they create constant shimmering and uneven patterns, like the light on moving water. That was the role that I wanted the strings to create underneath the whole piece. But the chord progression of the piece was actually just simple triads based on all the pitches that I got from the Aquarius constellation. The melody came from my  messing around with certain extensions that created a kind of eeriness, floatiness, and fluidity of the kind you feel when staring into the abyss of the ocean or riding on a boat into the horizon. There were certain things – certain scales –  that I knew I could impose over the fundamental triads to create that feeling in the listener.  

I’m an advocate of focusing on how music makes you feel and causes your body to move. I am always very sensitive to where a sound takes a listener. I didn’t intentionally seek to induce a floating feeling in the listener when I was writing the music, though it is definitely on the record.

This album began from my trying to translate the shape of constellations into musical content; from a very scientific and intellectual feel. The thought behind the album came out of my own curiosity about whether the symmetry that you see in the sky can somehow translate into music. And they did translate. Actually, many of the pitch collections that I got made a lot of sense. Sometimes, they were very tonal or otherwise had a very interesting relationship to one another. I wonder if that sensation of feeling you are floating in space is, in some weird way, connected to these relationships because I often find those kinds of connections in the universe.

PG: Why do you think the connections between the stars translated so well into music? Is it purely a function of mathematics?

PB: I think a little bit of that maybe has to do with the shapes of the constellations being so symmetrical. Everything in the cosmos makes sense, even if it looks like complete chaos. Everything is there for a reason. Everything mathematically makes sense. And, in the music, I partially use the circle of fifths to translate the connections between the stars into music. And the circles of fifths are so symmetrical as well.

The circle of fifths is such an interesting form because not only are the pitches on it organized in a certain symmetrical way, but there are also other things you can get from the circle of fifths that are almost mathematical, too. You can find key signatures. You can find leading tones. You can find all kinds of different things just from the shape.

All the compositions on the album utilize pitches from raw material I received from the constellations. I use these pitches from the constellations completely differently every time. Sometimes I use them to write melodies. Sometimes, I turn them into harmonic content. Sometimes I use melodies or scales with one of the pitches in it. So, I find my own ways to get more material.  But, even so, the constellations are at the core of it all. So, I wonder if there’s some weird common denominator that came through the music.

I was surprised by how something like an E flat major seventh chord closely matched a certain correlation between stars in a constellation. Interestingly, the electronic musician Arktureye – who is also my husband – did his own translations of stars for the project, but using a different approach. He used Ableton, turntablism, graphic notation, and other things like that. And, not all the time, but sometimes he got very similar pitches that I did for a certain constellation. That was really weird, and I don’t know how to explain it. But it is fascinating. All I can think of as an explanation is that there are common denominators to everything, not just in music, but in the universe itself. Music has an emotional aspect, but it is also a very exact science, as well. Math can explain everything in this world, and it can also explain music. So, I feel there’s a direct connection between music and how the universe operates.



PG:  The connections are especially interesting when you consider that there is no such thing as sound in space.

PB: Yeah, exactly. It’s really cool. I sometimes go down a rabbit hole of videos that attempt to convey how a particular galaxy sounds. Obviously, in space, there’s no sound. But these videos translate radio waves into actual sound. And through that, you hear the sound of something like a black hole. I think, in a sense, music is kind of like that because there’s a theoretical aspect behind it, and trying to figure out how things sound. But what started this whole project was my curiosity in seeing how the patterns of the stars could translate into music. It was a pleasant surprise how well it all worked out.  

Sometimes, as a composer, it is easy to get lost in the rules of what you’re supposed to do and not to do in a piece. But I think maybe writers should take chances based on their instincts. All of my writing – particularly on this record, because I was dealing with an unusual starting point – relies heavily on emotion. I focus on the vibe I wanted to convey without thinking too much about the theory behind the music.

PG: You were classically trained but use improvisation in your work. Do you think the fact that you use improvisation makes you more focused on the feeling of the music compared to someone who sticks more closely to the stereotypical Western classical approach of focusing more heavily on the notes on the written page?

PB: I think so. But it’s interesting, because even when I was a classical musician, I always believed there was more to music than just reading the written score before me. Even with a heavily notated score, you are not just translating. You’re also interpreting what’s on the page. So, whether the music is completely through-composed or completely improvised, there is still a place for individual expression. At the end of the day, it all comes down to tension and release. If you feel too much tension, it doesn’t make sense to continue with more tension. You have to release it at some point. And vice versa. If everything is release, release, release, release, the music will become daunting or boring. There must be a balance between those two elements.

Obviously, playing classical music sets more limitations on you. I was always aware of that as a classical musician. But as an improviser, especially when you have little to no limitations, you’re first relying on your instinct and where it takes you. I think being an improviser forces you to be more aware of those aspects instead of hiding behind written music. But that said, really great classical musicians are able to convey this, too. Incredible interpreters like Glenn Gould rely on their instinct. There’s a great TED talk by the percussionist Evelyn Glennie. Have you seen it?

PG: No.

PB: Evelyn Glennie was one of my first inspirations. She’s kind of the reason why percussion is more of a soloistic instrument today, instead of solely being relegated to the back of the orchestra. People like Colin Currie built upon her work, but it all started with Evelyn. She is an incredible musician who also happens to be deaf. She uses this setup – I often tell my students to watch her TED talk on it – where she first plays a piece of music exactly as it is written, but then states that if she played like that, her career would be over in five years. Then she plays it again, actually interpreting the piece, and it is so much better. It’s night and day compared to the first version. Her interpretation is super exciting and super entertaining. There is a lot of nuance behind the music, even in classical music, that is not on the page. Seeing things beyond the lines in everything, not just music, is incredibly important and helped me a lot in writing the music for this record.

PG: Earlier, you mentioned Breaking Stretch. Were you surprised that the album received the recognition it did?

PB: Yes. I’m still very surprised, actually. But that said, I don’t think about recognition when I make music. I’m only thinking about connecting with people. So, when you told me that the music on Of the Near and Far made you feel like you were floating, that made me so happy because it means it connects with you. I think everybody, even non-musicians, can connect to this album. I am always trying to find those connecting elements in my music. With Breaking Stretch, I used groove and the feeling of tension in rhythm to connect with listeners because those are things that we can all sense and feel, even for someone who doesn’t understand music theory. People can still feel tension and release regardless of the time signature or a rhythm’s complexity. Rhythm is so powerful. And maybe that is why that record particularly connected with so many people; rhythm is just hard to resist.

PG: So, did you feel much pressure going into Of the Near and Far, given how well-received Breaking Stretch was?

PB: Absolutely. Absolutely. Especially because sometimes people make more comparisons that, in a sense, don’t make sense. I definitely felt some pressure, but at the same time, I didn’t write the music for the new album with the other one in mind. I view each of my records to date as a different window into my musical mind. My music journey has been very complex because I started with classical music, but I grew up in a town extremely rich in popular music. Then I got into jazz and, later, electronic music.

I still use grooves on Of The Near and Far, like Afrobeat stuff on “Antlia” or the Afro-Cuban intro of “Andromeda.”Those are very much a part of who I am, too, and they will still come through the music. But classical is a huge component of this work. I was particularly shining a little more light on my classical percussionist background. In a sense, our repertoire of classical percussion is so new, as it came from the 1950s onward. Tōru Takemitsu, Minoru Miki, and some of John Cage’s works really started the rise for percussion. Then you have Edgard Varèse and [Karlheinz] Stockhausen, with electronic music. All of that stuff was part of my life as a classical percussionist.

I used to have a percussion ensemble before I moved to New York. And I got to work with composers like the incredible Paul Lansky, who was the head of the computer music department at Princeton. My ensemble asked him to come work with us, and he did, which was a dream for us. Working with him led me to incorporate pedals and all those things into my music.

Another influence for the record comes from [György] Ligeti. “When You Stare into the Abyss”  is partly inspired by Ligeti’s micropolyphonic symphony concept, where every layer moves, but does so in such a macroscopic way that it feels like a giant blob of sound slowly morphing. I really like that effect from Ligeti’s orchestral works.

“Lyra” was inspired by [Claudio] Monteverdi’s opera “La favola d’Orfeo.” The first time I was introduced to the story of Orpheus and Eurydice was through Monteverdi’s opera. As I wrote “Lyra,” I thought of the operatic structure. It starts with a beautiful intro featuring Miles [Okazaki] that reflects the beautiful beginning of Monteverdi’s opera, where Orpheus and Euridice are together and get married. “Lyra” then moves into a piano-vibes duo that reflects the entrance into a new act in the opera. It reflects the beginning of the night in the opera. Then another act begins when the full band comes in. “Lyra” was compositionally a little bit different from the rest of the pieces on the album because I was guiding myself more from the opera. I love opera. To me, it is very visual. You can close your eyes and – like reading a book –  imagine the scenery, even when you’re only hearing the opera’s music and not seeing the full performance. I wanted “Lyra” to have that aspect as well.

PG: So, for “Lyra,” you focused more on the mythology and Monteverdi’s opera than your pitch collection for the piece?

PB: Even for “Lyra,” I drew from the pitches I had collected from the constellations. I just took more liberties with them by incorporating other harmonic and melodic aspects that are not from the pitch collection I collected. The pitch collection was still the main driver for the piece, but I found ways to connect it to the opera and mythology.

PG: Many constellations are named in reference to mythology. Outside of “Lyra,” did you draw inspiration from the mythological backstories for your reference points?

PB: Not so much the mythology, but I did consider other aspects of the constellations. “Andromeda,” for example, I got a lot of pitches in the collection for that one. I explored and squeezed them as much as I could. I ultimately wrote them into a piece that reflects the shape of the Andromeda galaxy.

This summer, I traveled with my telescope to Connecticut and Maine to escape the light of New York. And, for the first time, I actually got a glimpse at Andromeda very clearly. It was eerie because you can almost faintly – and I am not using a super fancy telescope – see the gas. It looks like smoke. But the piece reflects Andromeda’s spiral shape with the melody on the vibes going to the strings, and even in the way that the chord changes move. The piece is so hard to maneuver.

I’m also fascinated by the fact that our galaxy, the Milky Way, will collide with Andromeda in a few billion years. Fortunately, long after we’re gone. But the vision of its collision into our galaxy is reflected in the piece, as well. At the end of the piece, there is huge chaos, and that reflects the collision.

The second part of our conversation with Patricia Brennan delves deeper into her compositional process for the album, writing for strings, graphic scores, and more. Of the Near and Far’ will be released on October 24, 2025 on Pyroclastic Records. It is available on Bandcamp. You can also read Brian Kiwanuka’s review of the album here.

Photo credit: Excerpt from graphic score composed by Patricia Brennan