Houston, We Have A Symphony

Some people dig Beethoven. Others love Beethoven. Astronaut Stephanie Wilson apparently thinks Beethoven and the Boston Symphony Orchestra are so out of this world that she's determined to take the music into orbit.

Wilson, a Pittsfield native preparing for her second trip into space for NASA, is planning to bring a page from Beethoven's 9th Symphony ("Ode to Joy") onto the space shuttle Discovery later this month. A fan of the symphony and its annual Tanglewood summer season, Wilson approached BSO Maestro James Levine about being able to to bring something from the symphony with her on her trip into space. Levine and members of the BSO signed a page from the conducting score and handed it over, according to a release from Symphony Hall, so that she would have a keepsake when she and the rest of the Discovery crew launch on October 23.

Wilson will return the sheet to Levine after the 14-day mission. First step in sending a symphony musician to the stars? Who knows? Bostonist just thinks it would be awfully nifty to watch the BSO's first violin trying to play the instrument in zero gravity.

Image from Amazon.