Italian-born, Malta-based Aerospace Engineer and musician/composer, Leonardo Barilaro ensnares us with his latest composition, “Maleth”. You may think this man’s name and accolades are a mouthful but just wait for his music. The track “Maleth” begins with a lonely, soft, and sombre piano ascending its way through a scale and refraining back with arpeggios and chromatics.
I’m sure it was either a good emulator/midi or it was recorded with an actual grand piano, because of the larger-than-life feeling these notes bring. One thing I noticed about Dr. Barilaro is that he has some classical and neoclassical elements in the middle of a modern-sounding track. And while he’s not the first composer to do that, this ascent of the scale followed by a crescendo followed by a harmonic in a higher octave gives off the feeling of a long and mysterious journey.
A fire-crackling sound starts in the middle of the song with some keyboard/synth harmonics that support the main sound, making the track feel more ominous and transferring the listener into the vastness of space. Truth be told, this is my first encounter with Dr. Leonardo Barilaro’s music, but I’m already seeing the influence of his job on his composition.
We all know that legendary Queen guitarist, Brian May, has a Ph.D. in Astrophysics besides his contribution to rock history, and I believe Dr. Leonardo Barilaro has a somewhat parallel path to that with his modern contemporary and neoclassical composition.
Dr. Barilaro had been on the International Space Station for one month, following the successful launch from Cape Canaveral on 14th July 2022, onboard the SpaceX CRS25 rocket. This track saw the light of day (on Earth) on the 15th of August when the International Space Station was over Malta.
Give this astronaut/musician/artist a chance and go through all of his tracks for one afternoon as I did, and you will feel a multitude of emotions with instrumentation that revolves mainly around the piano (pun intended).

