Category Archives: Announcements

Protein Folding to be Featured at BBC Proms

SoSCC provided support for the upcoming August 8, 2021 BBC Proms commission to Augusta Read Thomas (“Gusty”) for her new work entitled Dance Foldings (for orchestra).” The world premiere by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales will be ih the Royal Albert Hall in London, UK. The piece captures the process of protein synthesis (primary structure) and protein folding (secondary, tertiary, and quaternary structure). Important to our current emergence from the COVID-19 pandemic, Dance Foldings takes inspiration from the often frenzied biological ‘ballet’ of proteins that occurs when a messenger RNA vaccine initiates synthesis of the spike protein, which must then fold to the final folded structure. The folded spike protein then stimulates the antigenic response, producing antibodies to protect the human body to fight off subsequent viral challenges. (Click for a fascinating article by Megan Scudellari on the delta virus variant and brilliant animation of SARS-CoV2 virus particle by University of Utah’s Janet Iwasa.)

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Crossroads Rising Tide: The Movie!

SoSCC co-sponsored the October 25, 2020 NOVA premiere of the film version of Crossroads Rising Tide, composed by Laura Kaminsky and performed by the Fry Street Quartet and narrated by physicist Rob Davies. This powerful film encourages communities to live a more sustainable lifestyle is the cornerstone for maintaining a heathy biosphere that sustains us all.  

The Crossroads Project confronts a planet under siege and a future in peril. Through powerful music, compelling visuals, and a spellbinding narrative, The Crossroads Project inspires audiences to change their behaviors and the course of the future of our island planet.

Scar Tissue premieres in Ottawa

SoSCC co-commissioned Scar Tissue by Vancouver, BC-based composer Jeffery Ryan, with librettist and Giller-prize winning novelist and poet Michael Redhill. The premiere of Scar Tissue, in Ottawa, ON, Canada at the Ottawa Chamber Fest Concert Series was performed by the iconic Canadian piano trio, the Gryphon Trio,  in collaboration with the world-reknowned vocal ensemble Nordic Voices.

Themed on the concept of disturbance, recovery, and the role of relict structures in the recovery process, this piece captures in 9 movements how systems recover from devastating events and the establishment of a new normal. In human wound healing, in refugee crises, in weather disasters, in financial crashes, in rainforest deforestation, in accidents changing traffic flow, and in family transitions of death or divorce, the cycle of recovery is slow and never quite gets back to the original starting place.

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negative expanse = black holes in Berkeley

SoSCC commissioned a work titled negative expanse by UC Berkeley composer  Jon Kulpa and performed by the Friction Quartet.Themed on the dramatic orbiting and “descent” into a black hole, then collapse to a quantum singularity, this piece was been created for installation/performance in science venues, planetariums and other suitable spaces. negative expanse (2017) was premiered by the Friction Quartet in combination with an electronically interactive sound system in UC Berkeley’s Hearst Memorial Mining Building on April 30, 2017 as part of an astronomically-themed program entitled Spaced Out. The live performance was recorded and can be seen and heard here.

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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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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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