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

Meanwhile, two noteworthy updates are now posted in the Calendar of Events under the News tab.

First, we have scheduled the premiere of the “Negative Zero” piece by Jon Kulpa, to be performed by the Friction Quartet at the Presidio Officer’s Club on 13 May 2016.  I will have more comments on black holes and music in the future, but visit Jon’s site to learn more about the piece.

Second, SoSCC recently confirmed its sponsorship for the video component of the 22 September 2015 premiere of Crossroads/Emergence (see calendar of events) in Logan, Utah. The underlying global sustainability and climate change theme of the Crossroads Project reminded me of a posting related to the “sonification” of data of global warming.

While SoSCC is not specifically involved in data sonification, we take note of the musical potential of data sets, and embrace all potential opportunities for music to help communicate scientific concepts or data in dramatic and meaningful ways.  In this context, I think you will enjoy hearing an example of this: a piece for string quartet, “Planetary Bands, Warming World”, created by Daniel Lawford (then an undergraduate) and Prof. Scott St. George at the University of Minnesota. It offers powerful and poignant message about the pace at which the earth has warmed from 1880 to the present. See: http://www.openculture.com/2015/05/music-for-a-string-quartet-made-from-global-warming-data.html.