On today's date in 1951, the classic science fiction film "The Day the Earth Stood Still" was playing in theaters across America. The film's opening sequence depicted a UFO hovering over Washington, D.C. In the early 1950s, flying saucer sightings were increasingly common, perhaps a result of mass hysteria spawned by cold war tensions and the potential threat of atomic bombs dropping from the skies. Or maybe we WERE being visited by other planets?

In any case, the movie made a big impression at the time, reinforced by a memorable film score composed by Bernard Herrmann. And countless kids—and probably a few adults as well—memorized the magic words "Gort: Klaatu barada nikto" which, in the film, prevented Washington DC's destruction by death-ray robots from outer space.

Fast forward some 50 years to 1999, when Washington DC's National Symphony premiered a concerto for percussion and orchestra, a work composed for percussion virtuoso Evelyn Glennie by the American composer Michael Daugherty.

Inspired by the outer-space look of Glennie's percussion gear, Daugherty titled his piece "UFO" and asked that the soloist arrive unexpectedly and dressed as a space alien! In performance, Glennie moves through the audience and around the stage while performing sleight-of-hand improvisations on a variety of flying saucer-like percussive instruments.