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Beaming Up Jethro Tull
The singer/flautist will duet with U.S. astronaut Col. Catherine Coleman on April 12 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin’s orbit around the earth that established the Russian cosmonaut as the first human to travel into space.
But Anderson and Coleman won’t be in the same room when they duet, or, for that matter, even on the same planet. Anderson will perform live on stage in Perm, Russia, while Coleman will play flute from the International Space Station. The pair are expected to perform an excerpt from “Bouree,” the Johann Sebastian Bach composition that Anderson arranged for the 1969 Jethro Tull album Stand Up.
Not only has Coleman been practicing for the special occasion, but the astronaut has been practicing with Anderson’s flute, which has accompanied her in space for three months.
Longtime Tull fans can see where this is going. While Anderson is known for playing the flute while standing on one leg, Coleman will one-up him April 12 when she performs while floating in mid air. Let’s see the Minstrel in the Gallery top that.