Commissioned by chor.com 2021, Michael Ostrzyga, together with choir director Cornelius Trantow, endeavored to specifically develop choir music that is easy to moderately difficult and innovative and appealing. This resulted in three impactful miniatures besides ventures that have not (yet) been pursued further: by the numbers, Crossing the Bar and Farout (2018 VG18). Even if they could not be more different, they are fascinating and at the same time accessible for choirs and listeners alike.
2018 VG18 was until recently the most distant known object in our solar system. It moves behind Neptune in a highly eccentric orbit lasting approximately 735 years. Although an even more distant celestial body, 2018 AG37, was discovered in the same year (2018 stands for the year), it was not officially announced until February 2021. However, 2018 VG18 had already received the literally wacky name “Farout”: “Farout” means literally “far out”, however, “wacky”, “weird” and even “super” in a figurative sense. The choir piece Farout (2018 VG18) conjures up visions of this celestial body through experimental sounds.