Daugherty: Metropolis Symphony

Inspired by the fiftieth anniversary of Superman’s first appearance in the comics, Metropolis Symphony has been performed by orchestras all over the world. Hailed by the London Times as a “Symphonie Fantastique for our times,” Metropolis Symphony is a musical response to the myth of Superman, expressing the energies, ambiguities, paradoxes, and wit of American popular culture. Deus ex Machina is a piano concerto inspired by trains of the future and past: Fast Forward re-creates the machine-like rhythms of modern trains admired by the Italian futurists; Train of Tears recalls Abraham Lincoln’s funeral train; Night Steam evokes O. Winston Link’s historic photographs of steam locomotives rumbling and whistling their way into extinction