The plane was the Sikorsky S-42B flying boat, Samoan Clipper, and Captain Edwin Musick was the veteran Pan American pilot. The historic flight carrying mail from Auckland, New Zealand landed successfully in Honolulu on January 3, 1938. But disaster struck on the flight home, and the plane exploded over the Pacific Ocean, killing its seven-man crew.
Using dance and live music onstage, with conventional and invented instruments, Philadelphia's contemporary ballet company, BalletX, tells the story in their production of Sunset o639 Hours from Wednesday, November 16th through Sunday, November 20th at The Wilma Theater in Center City. More information here.
WRTI’s Susan Lewis talked to the composer and the inventor of new instruments about the evocative use of music and sound in the performances.
Radio script:
MUSIC: Karangahape Cowboy
Susan Lewis: The first airmail flight from New Zealand to the U.S stopped at islands along the way, but on the return trip, the plane exploded. In the ballet Sunset 0639 Hours, musicians playing onstage help conjure the time and place.
Composer and performer Rosie Langabeer: That’s why there’s a nightclub scene, there’s someone playing guitar on the beach. The era fascinates me — jazz musicians and composers incorporating exotic rhythms and sounds into their music.
SL: Among the sounds in this production?
Neil Feather: She told me the story and I thought, oh wow, ghost planes.
SL: Inventor Neil Feather creates mechanical instruments — like the magnapooter — which uses magnets on a spinning metal disc, mounted on a cigar box.
RL: We use it for acceleration effect.
SL: There’s also one called an anaplum.
NF: It’s sort of a drone and keeps phasing in and out of different tones. It’s very spacey.
SL: It’s the sound we think of as the ghost plane.
MUSIC: Haere Ra My Friend
SL: Sounds of a ghost plane in the distance, interwoven with music and dance, telling a story of courage, love, and loss; island culture and American jazz; and the pioneers who connected those worlds.
