Iowa Percussion, a program in the University of Iowa School of Music, will present “Percussion from Outer Space,” a free performance set for 3 p.m., Sunday, Oct. 28, in Riverside Recital Hall on the UI campus.

The program will feature music inspired in some way by the mystery of outer space, says Dan Moore, director of UI Percussion. “After the landing of the Curiosity Rover on Mars late last summer—at what NASA called the Bradbury Landing Site—I started thinking about the significance of the American Space Program,” Moore states in the program notes. “I remember watching the moon landing on TV in 1969 and, like every other kid at that time, dreamed of becoming an astronaut. In books such as Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles, films like 2001: A Space Odyssey or Apollo 13, even the ubiquitous Star Trek, we humans have always romanticized space travel. And isn’t it slightly ironic that after all the books and movies about alien invasions, it was earthlings who invaded Mars?”

The concert will feature:

• Cloud Nine by Dick Schory and Thomas L. Davis, the latter of which a late professor of percussion in the UI School of Music.
• Edgard Varèse in the Gobi Desert, composed by Paul Elwood. Moore has conducted Edgard Varèse in the Gobi Desert numerous times over the years, leading Elwood to ask Moore and Iowa Percussion to produce a video of the work that will appear as part of an art installation at the Harwood Museum in Taos, N.M., in November, and will also be aired on UITV.
• Rocket Summer, a new mallet ensemble composition by Moore that was inspired by Ray Bradbury’s 1950 science-fiction short story collection, The Martian Chronicles.
• Sky Crane(composed at the request of Moore) by UI School of Music alumnus Zach Zubow, a musical depiction of the “soft landing” technique that involved a crane to lower the Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity Rover safely to the surface of Mars, late in the summer of 2012.

The School of Music is part of the Division of Performing Arts in the UI College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. For accommodations at the concert contact the School of Music at 319-335-1603. For a UI arts calendar and details about upcoming events visit the new Arts Iowa website.