The recent Artemis space mission to the Moon stoked the public’s imagination, recalling the excitement and wonder the world displayed upon the occasion of the very first successful Moon landing mission, Apollo 11, an event that spurred works from artists and musicians the world over. Now, in the wake of Artemis, comes a new production from the Prometheus Music label of a collection of top-flight musical notables reviving a lost classic song from the Apollo era, Leslie Fish’s “Hope Eyrie.”

Literally a big Fish in a small pond, Leslie Fish was arguably the originator, and unquestionably a titan, of the once-obscure “filk” microgenre of music, which is based around songs written by fans of science fiction. Unlike most of the more than 600 compositions written by Fish before her death in 2025, “Hope Eyrie” took six full years to complete and was widely considered her magnum opus. 

Upon its original release, the song became the de facto anthem of the science-fiction fan community, garnering mention in books on both space exploration and folklore, and being described by Dr. Roger Launius, former chief historian of NASA and Associate Director for Collections and Curatorial Affairs at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum, as “a psalm for Apollo.”

But fan music at the time was usually produced in a lo-fi, DIY fashion, and such was the case with the original version of “Hope Eyrie.” Enter producer Eli Goldberg, head of Prometheus Music, since 1997 one of the “labels of record,” so to speak, for filk. Having issued no less than four of Fish’s albums, as well as work by other filk artists such as Julia Ecklar and a 2025 reissue of the long-lost cult classic “Keepers of the Flame” album from Phoenyx, releasing previously unissued Leslie Fish recordings had become somewhat of a mission for Goldberg. “Streaming gave new life to filk music,” Goldberg explains, “and Leslie was foundational for filk, so it’s important to fill out her legacy by releasing as many of her remaining recordings as we can.”

When a studio-recorded vocal track by Fish of “Hope Eyrie” was discovered in a New England storage unit, Goldberg turned the recording over to Michael Moricz, formerly Music Director for Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood and longtime arranger/conductor for Broadway’s annual Jimmy Awards.. Moricz proceeded to recruit an A-list team of talent to create a new, fully produced musical setting for “Hope Eyrie.”  At the core of Moricz’s crew were bassist Rob Jost (“Dear Evan Hansen,” Sesame Street), guitarist Steve Roberts (Stewart Copeland, Melissa Etheridge), four-time Grammy Award-winning cellist Nick Photinos, and mastering engineer and audio restoration specialist Phillip Klum (more album, TV, film, and Broadway credits than can be counted on all our fingers and toes put together) to mix and master the song.

Moved by the spirit captured in the song, Moricz threw himself into building an appropriate setting for the vocal track. “Creating a new arrangement for the iconic ‘Hope Eyrie’ has been very meaningful for me,” he declares. “The song’s celebration of the optimism that the ambitions of space travel bring to the human spirit make it one of the most inspiring of all filk songs for me, especially in our present time when science and technology are literally under threat.”

Moricz added meaning to the production every way he could. In addition to his orchestration, he recruited a group of children, including members of Chicago Ballet Arts  and Pittsburgh CLO Academy, to enrich Fish’s vocals on the lyric, “But the Eagle has landed; tell your children when. Time won’t drive us down to dust again.”

The finished recording exhibits a level of professional polish Fish may never have been fully able to achieve in her lifetime, but which successfully embodies the exhilaration and hope with which she infused the song. It is, of course, the voice of Leslie Fish that says it best. As she wrote in the late 1980s, “For a long time I had been fascinated with the concept of musical ‘magic’ – the ability of songs to arouse thought as well as feeling. For years I had been trying to write songs that had ‘magic,’ but my first real success was with ‘Hope Eyrie.’ I took infinite care trying to cast in words the sense of opened horizons, stark freedom, the end of an age of limits, the chance for immortality of the human species.”

“Hope Eyrie” is now available via major music distribution platforms, including:

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