“So Fragile, So Blue” is about something we all have in common – this beautiful planet Earth that we all call home.

At the core of this project is William Shatner and his remarkable talent for storytelling. In 2021, Shatner made a historic journey into space on Blue Origin’s rocket, New Shepard. Just before the launch, Shatner shared a meal with two old friends, Robert Sharenow and Dan Miller. For many years the trio had written songs together – firstly in person and later over Zoom throughout the pandemic.

“I met Robert and Dan for dinner and of course began to talk about writing a song about going up into space and made some notes. But then I went up and I came down and then I made some phone calls. One of the phone calls was to Robert and Dan. I said ‘You know, that song we started to write about space? Forget about it. It doesn’t work.” The experience was beyond anything we could have imagined. We have to write a song about it, but it’s not the one we jotted down that Sunday.

“So, we started to write a song, encapsulating, distilling what I experienced going up into space. We called it ‘So Fragile, So Blue’ and it does distil everything I felt and saw.”

Later, the songs would take on a new form, thanks to another long-term friend, Ben Folds, who was fascinated by Shatner’s experience going into space. Folds, who is Artistic Advisor at the Kennedy Center, brought new collaborators to the project – the wonderful composer and orchestrator Jherek Bischoff and bluegrass violin virtuoso and composer Gabe Witcher, who wrote original underscoring for the songs to create new orchestral works.

The friends’ creation was brought to life by its final contributors, conductor Steven Reineke and the National Symphony Orchestra, at the Kennedy Center in April 2022.