The Legend of the Northern Lights, an unusual work by Christopher Theofanidis that combines music with stunning imagery of the aurora borealis, will be presented at the Grant Park Music Festival in Chicago on August 8 and 9 at 7:30 p.m.
Carlos Kalmar will lead the Grant Park Orchestra in the world premiere of this work, which uses music and video imagery to retell a Canadian legend about the northern lights. The film was shot on location in northern Canada by visual artist José Francisco Salgado.
Salgado, who is an astronomer at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago, filmed much of the movie in Yellowknife in the Northwest Territories. I recently spoke with him about the experience of filming the northern lights in such a remote area.
"It was quite cold, even though it was late March," he recalled. "At night it would routinely drop to -24° F. And of course you have to film at night, so that means long hours standing on frozen lakes. Most of the photography was done close to ice roads on frozen lakes in the Yellowknife area. It was very surreal.
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