All posts by Glenn Prestwich

Third Coast Percussion’s “Reaction Yield” Triumphs in Chicago!

In 2016, SoSCC has commissioned Reaction Yield, an innovative work about synthetic organic and medicinal chemistry to be composed and performed by Third Coast Percussion in association with the exciting Ear Taxi New Music Festival in Chicago from October 5-10, 2016. Reaction Yield draws the analogy between the creation of a new composition of music from motif building blocks of tones, aural colors, rhythms, dynamics, and tempi with the process of creating a new composition of matter using a chemical catalog of molecules and a synthetic strategy.

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Muhly’s Control (Five Landscapes for Orchestra) Premieres at Abravanel Hall

In Sounds of Science Commissioning Club’s second commission with the Utah Symphony, Control (Five Landscapes for Orchestra) by Nico Muhly premiered in Abravanel Hall on December 4 and 5, 2015

Control (Five Landscapes for Orchestra), composed by Nico Muhly and with videography by Josh Higgason, is a sequence of five episodes describing, in some way, an element of Utah’s natural environment as well as the ways in which humans interact with it. This post describes the piece and several rehearsal snippets. For additional information, please see the KSL Channel 5 News piece, as well as the next blog post highlighting the preconcert interviews. This is the third of three Utah Symphony Commissions by award-winning, living American composers. A CD with Control by Nico Muhly,  Eos by Augusta Read Thomas and Switch by Andrew Norman will be released on 75th anniversary CD in March 2016. Two of these – Switch and Control – were co-commissioned by SoSCC!

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Switch – A Game of Control – Premieres in Salt Lake

From the Original Score, by Andrew Norman:

“Switch is a game of control. Each percussion instrument is a switch that controls other instruments in specific ways, making them play louder or softer, higher or lower, freezing them in place, and setting them in motion again. The soloist, dropped into this complex contraption of causes and effect, like the unwitting protagonist of a video game, must figure out the rules of this universe on the fly, all while trying to avoid the rewind-inducing missteps that prevent their progress from one side of the stage to the other. Continue reading →

Emergence is a triumph in Logan!

Blog posting for Crossroads: Emergence

From SoSCC founder, Glenn Prestwich:

Although the music had already been commissioned by the Fry Street Quartet (FSQ) and composed by Libby Larsen, the project sounded like an ideal opportunity for the newly-formed SoSCC to become part of a quintessential embodiment of our mission – the expression of science through music, and creating a collaboration between science and the performing arts. To this end, I attended the February 2015 premiere of Libby Larsen’s music by the FSQ, and began a dialogue with Rob and the FSQ about how SoSCC could best participate. In the end, our sponsorship of Emergence took the form of support for videographer Conor Provenzano, whose video projections were presented with actor Robert Scott Smith and the FSQ playing the five-movement string quartet. Since the video was an integral part of the performance art piece, we were recognized in the program in the following manner: Continue reading →

Music & Science in the News

To all our readers:

Starting this summer, I will be calling attention weekly to publications, posts, websites, editorials, and other places where music and science overlap. If you come across something that you’d like to share, please call it to my attention at gdprestwich@gmail.com. DRAFT Continue reading →

Sounds of Science Launches Website

April 20, 2015 – Sounds of Science Commissioning Club launched its website today! See who is involved with the project. Check out our calendar of past and upcoming events. Stay tuned for the latest updates on SoSCC sponsorships, collaborative commissions, and original commissions on scientific subjects.

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