Ad Astra Per Aspera

Commissioned by the Chrystallum Quartet in honor of Colonel (ret.) Eileen Collins, a native of Elmira, NY, for her accomplishments in aerospace exploration. This project is partially, generously and graciously funded by the Arts Council of the Southern Finger Lakes and Central United Methodist Church.

Ad Astra Per Aspera is the Kansas state motto and translates roughly as “To The Stars Through Struggle”. I saw that motto daily as a young child, on the flag in my elementary school classroom. This piece is about reaching for the impossible.

Bassoonist Martha Weber reached out to me in the spring of 2024 to ask about commissioning a piece for her chamber group Chrystallum, which has the unique instrumentation of flute, oboe, bassoon and piano, telling me that there wasn’t much rep for that combination. A bit of digging revealed a mere handful of pieces, most of which were actually arrangements of other works. Chrystallum wanted something specifically composed for the Finger Lakes region of NY, and after doing some thinking, I decided to write a piece inspired by the life of Colonel (ret.) Eileen Collins, born in Elmira, NY in 1956. She became the first woman to pilot the Space Shuttle and the first woman to command a shuttle mission.

Eileen wrote a wonderful autobiography called Through the Glass Ceiling to the Stars. Her journey spoke to me on a very personal level. The Challenger disaster took place in 1986, and like many other stunned and horrified kids in my generation, I saw the shuttle explode live on TV, which had been regularly rolled into our classroom for all of the shuttle launches. Also, her incredible journey in the military before she was accepted into the NASA astronaut program resonated with my own years of military service. She fought hard for all of her assignments and the pilot training that made shuttle piloting possible. She did it with humor, grit, and courage, and she did it in the face of unimaginable misogyny in a culture that is built by men for men.

Recently, after completing this piece, I visited some friends in Cocoa Beach, FL and experienced a couple of SpaceX launches from their yard. I felt a hair-raising sense of wonder and astonishment while witnessing first a rocket and then a crewed flight heading into space and burst into tears, completely undone.

— Amber Ferenz, Grayson, GA 2025