Episode 6a — A (Space) Christmas Carol, with Chris Hadfield
A short festive dispatch from orbit-adjacent territory. In this mini-episode, Steve drops into the feed with a Christmas gift from astronaut, author and musician Chris Hadfield: an intimate performance of his space-written carol Jewel in the Night, originally composed and recorded aboard the International Space Station.
Recorded specially for Origin of the Pieces listeners, this simple voice-and-guitar version keeps the human details front and centre and sets up Episode 7’s full conversation with Chris about music, exploration and why songs belong in space just as much as rockets do.
What we cover
Space carol teaser: Chris Hadfield’s "Jewel in the Night" as a live acoustic performance.
Pointer to Episode 7: A setup for the longer chat on music, spaceflight and curiosity.
Further listening & links
Full Transcript
Verbatim transcript of this mini-episode, reflowed for readability only. No wording edits.
Hello, Musically Curious People. How are you doing? Happy Christmas. This is not a full episode. This is just me dropping into your feed with the little micro Christmas gift that I promised you. And that is a song from wonderful person, all-round legend, and of course, astronaut and former commander of the International Space Station, Commander Chris Hadfield.
Now, for one reason or another, I know Chris, and I've worked with him quite a lot. Next episode, so that's episode seven, I'm gonna be running an interview that I did with Chris a little while ago, and we're gonna be talking about all sorts of fascinating stuff to do with music and space and much else. So please stay tuned for that.
But meanwhile, here is a little teaser. Because it's Christmas, I wanted to drop this before the full episode airs, and that is because this is a Christmas song that Chris wrote in space. He wrote and recorded it in space.
You can check it out in all the usual places. This is a special recording he did for me over Zoom. So forgive the quality of the recording, but I wanted to get the real deal, live and acoustic.
So yeah, please enjoy. This is Chris' space-based Christmas Carol called Jewel in the Night. Beautiful song.
So I'm gonna hand you over to Chris and wish you a very Merry Christmas and stay tuned for the episode dropping next week. Lots more of Chris and a lot of interesting other stuff too. Here's Jewel in the Night, the very first and only Space Carol, I guess. Yes. I'll jump to the bridge. Here we go.