ROCHESTER, N.Y. — Five weeks and counting until the total solar eclipse, and News10NBC is your official eclipse headquarters. The event is going to last less than five minutes, but the night before, the RPO has created two hours to get you in the right frame of mind. 

In an exclusive interview, the conductor and composer sat down with Chief Investigative Reporter Berkeley Brean.

Berkeley Brean, News10NBC: “You know, we could really use this kind of weather for eclipse day.”

Jeff Tyzik, RPO conductor, composer: “This is incredible. Actually, we need that moon in front of the sun this morning.”

Tyzik wrote music he calls Galileo, and it’s part of the RPO’s eclipse concert the night before the big day.  

Brean: “Where did you get the inspiration for it?”

Tyzik: “When the idea of this concert first came up, I was so inspired by the opportunity to put this incredible event on that I was inspired to write a piece of music. I wrote a three movement suite called the “eclipse suite.” The first movement is called “liftoff” where a space ship takes off from earth and heads towards the moon. The second movement is basically the eclipse movement, where the spaceship is on its way to the moon and seeing the glorious heavens around it, the nebula, the stars. And the final movement is called “Galileo” and I wondered to myself when Galileo looked up to the heavens and looked at the moon and was starting to put it together of how humanity related to the universe. What was he thinking? What was the wondrous feeling that he had inside? And that’s what I tried to depict in that music.”

Brean: “The people at the concert, when they hear this music, what is it that you want them to feel?”

Tyzik: “I want them to feel the beauty, the sense of calm, the sense of wonder and a sense of understand of how we relate to the rest of what we encounter in the universe.”

News10NBC is a proud partner of the RPO’s Eclipse Spectacular. It’s set for Sunday, April 7 at the Blue Cross Arena. Tickets start around $26. To purchase tickets, click here.