Fermilab selected its next guest composer for the year-long residency program.
guest composer
As this year’s composer-in-residence, they will create musical pieces in concert with Fermilab’s scientists.
The U.S. Department of Energy’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory has selected David Biedenbender as its 2021-22 guest composer. The program, now in its second year, provides a composer the opportunity to interpret Fermilab research through music and celebrate the relationship between art and science. Biedenbender has a history of creating music inspired by physics.
From Nature, Feb. 17, 2021: Fermilab guest composer David Ibbett writes about his latest piece, Neutrino Music, and how bringing artists and scientists together on the stage can help them to communicate the complex beauty of our world in a language that everyone can understand and appreciate.
From Yale University, Jan. 22, 2021: For his new piece of music, “MicroBooNE,” David Ibbett, Fermilab’s first composer-in-residence, collaborated with physics professor Bonnie Fleming through a series of discussions about the science behind the experiment that inspired the composition. The neutrino-inspired piece premiered on Dec. 8, 2020, as part of the Fermilab Arts and Lectures Series.
David Ibbett, Fermilab’s first guest composer, converts real scientific data into musical notes and rhythms. His latest piece, “MicroBooNE,” will make its world premiere at a virtual concert on Dec. 8. In this audio interview, Ibbett shares a sneak peek of the song and explains his compositional process.
An ensemble of soprano, strings, piano and electronics gives voice to the mysterious neutrino in David Ibbett’s latest musical work as Fermilab guest composer. Mapping the waves of neutrino oscillation onto melodies played by the strings, Ibbett sonifies a neutrino phenomenon typically represented in abstract mathematical expressions. Hear the performance and Ibbett’s comments in this four-minute video.