I'm fortunate enough to have seen Jupiter and its Galilean moons through various telescopes, many years before I began composing seriously. Even the hazy, polluted skies of London couldn't diminish the excitement of seeing with my own eyes, to the extent of resolving their tiny shadows on Jupiter's turbulent surface. Somehow it was those shadows that cemented the system's reality for me - light from the sun travelling half a billion miles to be interrupted by this quartet of varied, distant worlds, four centuries after Marius and Galileo first observed them.

  So, after several years spent composing shorter pieces, the focus for my first full-length work was already chosen - a tribute to and encapsulation of the characters and astounding aspects of these four moons, rendered in the Romantic orchestral language I love. Whether the music serves more to depict my own fascination with or directly personify the moons, though? I couldn't tell you.