A Sibelius soundtrack for a Texas storm

I visited Texas a few months ago, driving from city to city as I made my way across the state.  On the leg from Dallas to Houston, I found myself chasing one of those Texas-sized storms, the kind of which we just don’t get in California:  lightning bolts flashing back and forth across the sky from one cloud to the other without ever hitting the ground.  It was an impressive sight.

Coincidentally adding to the sense of drama that night was the fact that I just happened to have the Sibelius 2nd Symphony cranked up on the sound system.  I always listen to music LOUDLY when driving cross-country, though it tends to vary between genres depending on my mood (somehow, I don’t think Foo Fighters or New Order would have backed up the video quite as well).  The more I drove towards the storm, the more the music and visuals seemed tailor-made to each other.  I eventually grabbed my phone and made the video above.  Just as I started recording, the lightning seemed to slow down a little — if I were lucky enough to have started the video one-minute earlier, it would have been even more striking.

The final result was not quite as auteur-like as Salonen & Sellar’s re-imagining of The Wind, but I thought it was worth sharing nonetheless.