Dreamchaser is the realization of a lifelong journey that began when Brightman was just a little girl growing up in Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire, England, dreaming of spectacular, unknowable things. “When I look back, my mind’s eye brings me a rush of images from all of the incredible things that I have been privileged to experience in my life,” she explained. “But if I keep tracking back my thoughts eventually come to rest on a flickering TV screen in 1969.” That summer, when Apollo 11 touched down on the moon and Neil Armstrong bounded across its surface, Brightman felt herself transform, and all her hopes and aspirations shift. “Watching the first man land on the moon – it was an epiphany. It changed things. It actually helped me understand what it was that I had to do in my life, to further myself, to do things, to think outside of the box,” she said. “I could go that far, I could do that. From that moment, I started to work really hard.”
Now, at age 52, Brightman is about to embark on what she calls “the greatest adventure I can imagine.” She will be part of a three-person team travelling to the International Space Station on board a Soyuz rocket, where she’ll orbit the earth 16 times daily and become the first professional musician to record a song from space – another ground-breaking moment in a career already riddled with firsts. After undergoing extensive mental and physical testing in Star City, Russia, Brightman was cleared to train as a cosmonaut, and likens the anticipation of her upcoming voyage to being in love. “It’s wonderful,” she said. “It’s this thing that stays beside me as I’m walking down the street.”
In the midst of preparing for her mission, Brightman recorded a collection of new songs influenced by her training. “They’re connected subliminally – in the feelings of the songs and what they gave to me, which was something very uplifting, very open, very outward,” she said. “It’s what we do – we look out at the night sky and we dream and we imagine and we explore. The words ‘Dream Chaser’ encapsulate all of that for me.”Dreamchaser is Brightman’s first collaboration with the producer Mike Hedges (U2, Dido, the Cure), who was deeply impressed by her precision and the scope of her vision.
For Brightman, Dreamchaser is a culmination, an ethos – the perfect soundtrack to what’s next for her, and what’s next for all of us.
Check out Sarah Brightman’s Dreamchaser album at Astroplus, Odyssey Music & Video and Fully Booked or online via iTuneshttp://smarturl.it/sb_dreamchaser.
