Chris Hadfield seems to be on a quest to achieve every childhood dream imaginable.
After a stint as Canada’s favourite astronaut, Hadfield is now assuming the role of rock star as he prepares to perform his music with a full symphony orchestra.
The former International Space Station commander will debut some of the songs he wrote high above the planet during a performance in Windsor, Ont., on Friday. Robert Franz, the conductor of the Windsor Symphony Orchestra, is eager to perform with the Space Oddity star.
"This is his first ever full performance with a symphony orchestra of the songs that he wrote while in the space station,” said Franz. “It's really special."
Hadfield wrote the songs up on the ISS but has yet to perform them under the influence of gravity.
"You know he obviously had a lot of time on his hands,” said Franz, laughing. “He was writing away, and so there's a number of these songs, about a dozen or so in total.”
For Hadfield, who will perform four times with the Windsor Symphony Orchestra, the art of sound is universal.
"Music is fundamental to human nature, and art is how we communicate with each other,” Hadfield told CTV News. “And when we're starting to live somewhere new in the human experience – off the planet – we're not just probing space, but we've moved to space.”
“We've left Earth, and how do we understand that? How do we express it to each other?"
Franz, despite his years of experience leading the orchestra, still has a difficult time expressing that feeling.
"I still pinch myself every morning when I wake up to think that, for a living, I get to make music, I get to conduct an orchestra, multiple orchestras, I get to work with people and meet people like Chris Hadfield,” he said. “My life is really, really incredible."
Hadfield will be performing one show Friday, two shows on Saturday and a final show on Sunday afternoon at Windsor’s Capitol Theatre.
With a report from CTV's Chris Campbell
