So fragile, so blue

A View from Above So Fragile, So Blue is about something we all share: this beautiful planet Earth that we all call home. At the center of the project is William Shatner and his remarkable talent for storytelling. In 2021, Shatner took a historic space journey on Blue Origin's New Shepard rocket. Shortly before the flight, Shatner sat down with two old friends, Robert Sharenow and Dan Miller. The trio had been writing songs together for years. Shatner recounts: "I met Robert and Dan for dinner and of course started talking about writing a song about going to space and made some notes. But then I flew up and came back down. One of the first phone calls was to Robert and Dan. I said: 'Remember that song we were going to write about space? Forget about it. It doesn't work. The experience exceeded everything we could have imagined. We need to write a song about it, but not the song we wrote that Sunday. So we started writing a song that puts into words what I experienced during the space flight. We called it 'So Fragile, So Blue', and it really captures everything I felt and saw." The songs would later take on a new form thanks to another old friend, Ben Folds, who was fascinated by Shatner's experiences in space. Folds, who is artistic advisor to the Kennedy Centre, brought new collaborators to the project - composers Jherek Bischoff and Gabe Witcher. The work of the friends was ultimately brought to life in April 2022 at the Kennedy Center by the National Symphony Orchestra and Steven Reineke.