By James Dacey
Today, people around the world have been celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of Yuri Gagarin’s flight into space. On 12 April 1961, the Russian cosmonaut inspired the world when he underwent a108-minute orbit aboard his Vostok (or “East”) spacecraft. To mark the anniversary, the US astronaut Cady Coleman has joined up with Ian Anderson, the founder of UK band Jethro Tull, for a special musical collaboration.
The pair performed last week via a satellite link up with Coleman aboard the International Space Station and Anderson in the Russian city of Perm. Both playing flutes, the pair played a section from Bouree, which Jethro Tull played while on a US tour during 1969, the year that Apollo 11 took Neil Armstrong to the Moon.
