Julie Giroux (b. 1961) is a composer in many media who has made her mark especially in the wind band realm. A Massachusetts native who grew up in Arizona and Louisiana, Giroux spent the early part of her career arranging and orchestrating music for film and television, as well as for several pop stars in Los Angeles. Since about 1997, she has focused her creative energies on original compositions. She has found broad interest in her work around the world, and she has been commissioned to write new music by ensembles of all levels. Most of her works are published by Musica Propria.
Journey Through Orion was commissioned by the Association of Concert Bands (ACB) and premiered at their national conference in 2006 in Williamsport, Pennsylvania. The piece was inspired by images from the Hubble Space Telescope. Giroux elaborates in this excerpt from her program notes:
Photographs from the Orion Molecular Cloud Complex simply put are out of this world. Pictures of the Great Orion Nebula, Barnard’s Loop, M78, M43, the Molecular Clouds 1 & 2 (OMC-1, OMC-2) and The Horsehead Nebula never cease to capture my imagination. I have journeyed there many times in my mind so I decided to sketch that journey with notes. Travel with the music 1,500 light years away into the constellation Orion the Hunter, into the Molecular Cloud Complex and through the Great Orion Nebula where Stars and Ideas are born.
She also refers her listeners to the Hubble Telescope website, which features an ever-updating gallery of these amazing images.
The University of Texas at El Paso Symphonic Winds perform Journey to Orion:
This astronomy video uses several images of the objects named above in its first minute or so:
Journey Through Orion can be found on Julie Giroux’s website, her publisher Musica Propria (which includes a score preview), the Palatine Concert Band program note page, and the ACB commission page.