Wind, Sand & Stars

This concert of ‘words and music’ captures the daring days of early aviation, when to be a pilot was a thing of wonder, in an intrepid journey with the daring French aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, author of Le Petit Prince.

Extracts from the autobiography of the great aviator, are narrated and interwoven with a soundscape from twentieth-century France, from the minimalist chords of Satie to the bright and exquisite world of Ravel; from the exotic flavours of Debussy to the grit and pathos of Montmartre Chanson.

The pilot, poet, and writer Antoine de Saint-Exupéry grew up in an impoverished aristocratic family before qualifying as a military pilot and establishing airmail routes around the world. His seminal novella Le Petit Prince drew on his experiences as a pilot, including his 1935 near-death plane crash and rescue from the Saharan desert. Saint-Exupéry was declared missing, presumed dead, in 1944, following his disappearance from a WWII military reconnaissance mission; the wreckage of his plane only came to light sixty years later following the discovery of his identity bracelet.

“Flying is not the point. The aeroplane is a means, not an end. It is not for the plane that we risk our lives. … But through the plane we can leave the cities and the accountants, and find a truth that farmers know. We are in contact with the wind, with the stars, with the night, with the sand, with the sea. We try to outwit the forces of nature. … I have no regrets. I’ve gambled and I’ve lost...But at least I have breathed the wind of the sea.”