Some of my readers I am sure are familiar with The Plants suite by Gustave Holst. And if you are not directly familiar with it, I am pretty sure about 99.9% of you are at least familiar with the opening to the first movement, Mars: The Bringer of war.
Interestingly enough, my first experince with Holst (and several other classical composers) was not through the orchestral but through an artist known as Isao Tomita.
Tomita was an artist who utilized analog synthasizers to both compose orginal music as well reinvision great classical works. He came to a level of worldwide fame 1974 with his arragment of pieces by Claude Debussy on the album Snowflakes are Dancing. What really set Tomita aside in his work was he sought to do more than simply reproduce or mimick physical instrments. Instead he made entirely new instraments or voices to take the place of instrments in the classical pieces.
I grew up listening to Tomita's albums over and over. Apprently this made me an oddball even among other oddballs. There was no one in my peer groups I could relate any of this too. I did find a certain comfort though in seeing his works appear with a wink and a nod in other media, such as in the Carl Sagan's Casmos: A Personal Journey.
Growing up, my favorite piece was, of course, Mars. Today, however, I find myself more drawn to Venus, Jupiter, Saturn and even Neptune.
Sadly, I dropped off following up on Tomita's works sometime after his Grand Canyon album, and have only been able to aquire bits and pieces of his work over the past few years.
So, for those familiar with the orginal, and those curious to listen:
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